


False Image

by make_your_own_world



Series: Sam Winchester x Reader Short Stories/Oneshots [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Genie/Djinn, Cas is a detective, F/M, Female Reader, Fluff, Implied Smut, M/M, Reader-Insert, light angst? idk if it can really be called that, lots of other hunters are mentioned, reader is a vet, sam and dean are firefighters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-30
Updated: 2019-01-30
Packaged: 2019-10-19 02:52:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17593244
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/make_your_own_world/pseuds/make_your_own_world
Summary: Your life is perfect until it's not.Dealing with the aftermath of a hunt reveals some secrets.





	1. Chapter 1

Sam cringes when Dean sighs, loudly, as they wait for their supervisor to call them into his office. What had started out as a little prank war had somehow evolved into a station-wide fight that somehow also included the police in the building over, dogs, shaving cream, and an entire bathroom filled with bread.

So it had escalated a little bit. And he and Dean had started it, so they’re the ones in trouble, even though they’d had nothing to do with covering the dogs with shaving cream and letting them loose in the police station or buying all those loaves of bread and clogging the ladies’ toilets and sinks with them.

“Winchesters?” Bobby, their grumpy old supervisor, calls, sticking his head out of his office. He doesn’t sound like he’s in a good mood, but then again, he never sounds like he’s in a good mood. And he usually has a soft spot for him and Dean, seeing as how their dad had worked at the station too and Bobby’d practically adopted them after John started taking crazy long trips.

At least Rufus isn’t supervising today. They would have their asses handed to them on silver platters.

“Come on, Bobby, you know this isn’t our fault!” Dean says the moment the door shuts behind him.

“You started the pranks, and company policy—”

“Technically, _Sam_ was the one who did the first prank,” Dean interrupts.

“Hey!”

“Don’t interrupt me, boy,” Bobby growls and Dean rolls his eyes. Sam shoves him with his shoulder and Dean retaliates.

Before the brothers end up wrestling on the floor (which happens more than Bobby, who claims responsibility for raising them, would like to admit) Bobby orders them to sit down.

Sam sits immediately, but Dean makes a production out of it as usual, as he always does. “It wasn’t even us who did the whole bread thing, that was Gabe the Crime Scene Investigator next door!”

“ _And_ ‘Detective’ Cas,” Sam adds. “Dean just doesn’t want to get his boyfriend in trouble. And guess how they got in in the first place?” He tilts his head to Dean and looks at Bobby, who rolls his eyes, but he can’t help but chuckle when Sam sticks his tongue in his cheek.

Dean blushes and ignores his little brother. He hadn’t even known Cas could be that devious. It had been a good move, though.

“I still don’t know how Gabe persuaded him to do that,” Sam adds thoughtfully. He yelps when Dean smacks his shoulder.

“You two have proven you can’t handle working together, so I’m separating you for the next two weeks.”

Sam frowns. He and Dean work in the same department and live together. Pretty much the only time they’re not together is when Dean’s on a date with Cas.

“Sam, you get regular shift, Dean, you get night shift. _Long_ hours.”

Dean sits bolt upright. “Bobby—”

“You’ll survive not seeing your boyfriend for two weeks, Dean,” their surrogate father responds. “Don’t argue with me, boy.”

“It’s not fair,” Dean whines. “Sam’ll still get to see _his_ girlfriend.”

Bobby’s eyes widen as Sam blushes and kicks his brother.

“It’s Y/N,” Dean says, grinning wickedly at Bobby’s shocked expression and Sam’s red face. “She’s our cute neighbor in apartment 67. Man, I wish she could have been on the other side of 68.”

“Dean, _shut up_ ,” Sam hisses.

“Look at this!” Dean crows. “He can run into fires with no fear, but the second I even _mention_ his little crush he blushes like a schoolgirl. She’s not much better, either. If it wasn’t for me, they wouldn’t even talk to each other. They’re too _shy_.”

Sam pushes his brother out of the chair.

Bobby pushes them out of his office and leaves them to wrestle on the ground, much to the amusement of the passing Jo and Gordon, who’d just got back from _actually_ helping a girl get her cat out of a tree.

* * *

 

_Day three of no Dean,_ Sam thinks to himself while walking up the stairs to his apartment floor, bone tired from helping extinguish an electrical fire across town. It’s surprisingly peaceful without his brother, albeit boring. The most he’s ever seen his brother is that one time Dean was driving home and Sam was driving to the station and they waved at each other. Working 12-hour shifts can be exhausting. He can’t wait until the two weeks are over.

The thing that annoys Sam, though, is that Dean was right—without him pushing the two of you to talk to each other and him, the most you ever do is smile at Sam and mumble a quick hello if you ever catch each other in the halls. Sam isn’t sure if you’re just that shy or avoiding him. Knowing his track record with girls, probably both.

Cas is sitting at the kitchen table when Sam gets back. “Hello, Sam,” he says without turning around. Neither of the brothers know how he does it.

“Hey, Cas. What’re you doing here?” Sam replies, smothering a yawn with his hand.

“Dean hasn’t spoken to me in three days,” Cas says in that deep, slow Cas way of his. “Do you know if he is mad at me?”

It takes Sam’s head a few moments to catch up. “Oh! Oh, I thought Dean told Gabe to tell you—he probably forgot—but, uh, me and Dean got in trouble at work for that whole prank thing so he’s been working the graveyard shift and I’ve been working the day shift—anyways, Jo hid his phone somewhere in the station as punishment for the whole bread thing because, well, she can’t do it to you so she’ll do it to your boyfriend, because she’d gotten her period and Gabe told her it was you that had taken all the tampons out of the dispenser thing—”

“What?” Cas whirls around, blue eyes wide. “That wasn’t me! That was _definitely_ Gabriel!”

Sam shrugs. “I don’t know why Jo trusted him, but yeah. Dean says she’ll give it back in three days if he hasn’t found it yet, but he’s determined to find it before then. I guess he’s been too tired from working all night that he hasn’t been able to call you. He’s fine, though.”

“I apologize,” Cas immediately says, standing up. “You are exhausted as well. I will try to contact Dean and help him find his phone. He still doesn’t know about Fluffy’s new veterinarian. Hopefully today will be a slow day of work. Goodbye, Sam.”

“Why’d Fluffy need a new vet?” Sam asks, amused. Cas’ bunny, it seems, needs to go to a different vet every other month. Cas hasn’t been able to find one he likes.

“He was refusing food,” Cas replies. “Goodbye.”

“Say hi to Ash for me!” Sam calls, but the door’s already closed. Hopefully Cas heard him anyway.

A little disappointed he didn’t get to see you, Sam plugs in his phone and hops into the shower. He can’t wait to get in bed.

* * *

 

Sam wakes up fifteen minutes before his alarm is supposed to go off. Two people are running around inside his apartment.

“Heya, Sammy!” Gabriel practically shouts upon seeing that he’s awake.

“Sorry, Sam!” someone else yells and Sam shoots upright. He’s never heard you shout before.

A fluffy orange monster jumps onto his bed and right off it before bolting over to the small kitchen. Sam can only watch with an open mouth as it jumps onto the counter and into an empty shelf, conveniently just above how far you and Gabe can reach.

“God _damnit_ ,” you swear, and Sam realizes that he finds that pretty hot. “I’m so sorry, Sam. This is all Gabe’s fault, I swear.”

Gabe just laughs and pulls a lollipop out of his pocket. “Y/N, I am _offended_.”

“I hate you,” you say out loud, though it’s unclear if you’re talking to your cat or the trickster. As it is, the cat soothes its ruffled fur and squeaks at you. It has really big eyes.

“I can get him,” Sam offers and throws the sheets off. “Um, if you don’t mind me asking, how did you guys get in _here_?”

“Well, I had knocked on her door and had a bunch of catnip in my pockets,” Gabe explains as Sam hesitantly reaches for the cat in his shelf. Unlike the abomination that had jumped on his bed, this cat just rubs its head against his hand and starts to purr. “He came out and started running around in the hall. I picked your lock and got him in here.”

“And why did you want that to happen?” Sam asks while lifting the cat out of the shelf. He is very aware that you are standing right next to him and don’t even come up to his shoulders. Your smile when he hands your cat to you makes his stomach flip.

Gabe shrugs. “It was fun to see Y/N running around.”

“You’re paying double the next time you come in,” you inform him and hug your cat, who meows in protest and tries to get out of your arms immediately. “Thank you so much, Sam.”

“I’m your favorite customer, sweetheart!” Gabe calls to your hastily retreating back.

“Please, Cas is so much politer!” you call back.

Sam can’t help but feel a small bit of jealousy at how easily you talk and joke with Gabe but can’t even look at Sam.

“Wow, Deano really wasn’t lying,” Gabe says, tossing the lollipop stick into the trash can. “You’ve got it really bad.”

“How—how do you know about that?” Sam asks, already blushing as he glances at the door. You’d closed it behind you. Hopefully you can’t hear what they’re saying, though the only way that would happen is if you were eavesdropping directly the behind the door.

“Dean was telling my baby bro about it so I decided to see if it was true.” Gabe shrugs.

Sam’s mouth shrugs open. “So that was all… you did that all on purpose?”

The other man winks. “You’re gonna be late for work, Sammy.”

Sam looks at the clock and curses when he sees he’s right. “Screw you, Gabriel!”

“You wish,” he replies. “See ya, Sammy!”

“And stop calling me ‘Sammy’!”

* * *

 

“That sounds…” Sam can’t help his grimace.

Cas just smiles at him. “Bobby already said he doesn’t mind. There haven’t been many fires for a few weeks, so there’s no need to worry. Please, Sam? I have the address for Fluffy’s vet, the office number, and the vet’s personal number just in case.” He hands Sam a piece of paper with that information on it, as well as Dean and Cas’ numbers (as if Sam needed any reminders) and some other random numbers Cas apparently thought Sam might need for his four-hour babysitting gig. Most of them are different pizza places’ numbers.

“Cas, what do you think is going to happen to Fluffy while you’re gone for four hours?” Sam asks, staring at the paper. “You leave him alone for longer while you’re working.”

“Luci watches him since he’s still on house arrest,” Cas answers, looking through his pockets. “I’ll have to figure out if someone would like to babysit him when his sentence is lifted. Can I have the paper back?”

Sam hands it back. “Couldn’t you just bring him to the station? There’s always officers there and everyone loves rabbits, right?”

Cas scribbles another number on the paper and hands it back to Sam. “That’s Luci’s number. And that is a good idea, Sam. I’ll have to ask Amara if that would be allowed.”

“What about Chuck?”

“Chuck’s on vacation right now.”

“Fine, go enjoy your romantic picnic at the station,” Sam finally agrees, even though there was no question that he would. “I still think putting up a picnic blanket in the vending machine room isn’t very romantic, but whatever.”

“I think visiting my boyfriend while he’s working because I haven’t seen him lately is very romantic,” Cas replies seriously.

“Huh. Well, you go, Casanova.” Sam wishes he could be as brave as Dean was when he’d finally asked Cas out. Look where it got them: they’ve been going steady for two years and the only fights they ever have are about throwing themselves in the line of fire while doing their jobs.

“My full name is Castiel, Sam. It is not Casanova.”

“Get out, Cas.”

“Goodbye, Sam.”

Sam turns to look at the deceptively cute-looking bunny Cas had left him with. Dean had gotten Cas Fluffy for, like, their third date or something and Cas had loved him ever since. He had brown eyes, grey fur, and one white ear.

This bunny costs Cas more than any other pet Sam has ever known just by having health problems and going to the vet because of ‘emergencies’ where most of the time he’s faking symptoms, and is a master escape artist. He bites everyone except Cas.

Sam and Dean hate him, which is one of the only things they can agree on.

It takes two hours for Fluffy’s first emergency to start. He’s choking and coughing a lot. “Goddamnit,” Sam mutters, pacing around his room while the demon bunny tries to kill himself. “Luci, pick up.” Sam calls three times and he doesn’t, so he finally has to look at the vet’s numbers that Cas gave him. When he calls the office, he’s told that the vet’s already gone home so, gathering up his pride, Sam dials the vet’s number to ask her to help save the life of a demon bunny trying to kill itself.

“Hello?”

Sam pauses and cocks his head. “Um, Y/N?”

“This is Y/N Y/L/N, yes,” you answer. “Who is—Sam?”

“Yeah.” Sam smiles (you’d remembered what he sounded like!) but the renewed sounds of choking behind him wipe it off his face. “Sorry, Cas Novak gave me your number because he said you were his bunny’s vet but—”

A series of knocks sound at the door. When Sam opens up, you’re standing there in your scrubs and carrying a bag with your phone to your ear.

“Um, hi,” you say. Sam hears it through the phone too.

“Hi,” he responds and stares at you.

“So, um, Fluffy?”

“Oh, yeah!” Sam steps back and rubs the back of his neck. “So I guess you are his vet after all.”

You laugh softly. “Yeah.”

To Sam’s awe, you reach inside Fluffy’s cage and pick him up without him even trying to get away, which might have something to do with how he’s choking, but it’s still impressive.

“You little bastard,” you mutter, crooking a finger and putting it in his mouth.

Sam laughs. “I never imagined you cursing so much.”

“I’m polite, Sam,” you reply without looking back at him. “I don’t do it in front of the owners, but I bet you won’t tell on me. And I don’t really curse at people I barely know.”

“You barely even look at people you don’t know,” Sam mutters to himself but he thinks you hear him; you stiffen a little bit.

“Can you hand me his water bottle?” you ask, your voice definitely a little sharper than it had been just seconds earlier. Sam scrambles for the weird upside-down dispenser thing he’d never really understood and places it in your hand. You tip a few drops of water into the rabbit’s mouth and rubs his throat. He stops choking, leaving the apartment so quiet Sam’s ears ring.

“Oh, you’re bad,” you coo, holding him up. “I don’t know if you were faking it or really choking, but you are _bad_. I’ll text it all to Cas, but I would take away his food for the time being and put the water back in. From now on I’d recommend smaller bits of food, because Fluffy can’t seem to handle anything big.”

“Thanks, Y/N.” Sam smiles big at you after you put Fluffy back in his cage and you immediately redden. “If he’d died when I was babysitting him, Cas would’ve killed me.”

You pick your bag up off the floor. “It’s really no problem. I like seeing Fluffy a few times each month. He’s sweet if you’re a girl, or Cas.”

“And me and my brother aren’t either of those things,” Sam realizes. “Which would be why he hates us.”

You nod and poke your fingers through the mesh of the demon bunny’s cage to scratch at his fur. “Well, knock on my door if you need anything else, all right?”

Sam nods and escorts you out of the apartment. In the doorway, you hesitate.

“Hey, why are you babysitting Cas’s bunny? I thought his brother Luci normally did that.”

“Well, Luci told Cas that he didn’t want to deal with the little demon tonight so Cas brought him to me since him and Dean are going on a ‘date’ in the vending machine room of the fire station.” Sam rolls his eyes.

You brighten visibly. “Your brother Dean is Dean Winchester? What a small world!”

“How—”

“Cas is pretty talkative,” you shrug. “And we got to know each other more every time he brings Fluffy in. Let’s just say I didn’t think someone could talk about green eyes so much.”

Sam makes a face.

* * *

 

After hearing that you’d already heard about him, Dean goes out of his way to talk to you so much that you feel comfortable enough to say hi to both brothers by the end of the week. Now Sam’s a bit jealous his brother got the graveyard shift, because he can say hi to Y/N whenever he’s going to work or coming home.

“I swear, Sammy, I’m gonna get you two together soon,” Dean says loudly as the brothers and Cas walk through the park. The station is closed today because of a holiday. If any fires start, they’ll all get alerts on their phones.

“Shut up,” Sam hisses, glancing around with paranoia as if people will be able to figure out what he’s talking about immediately. More importantly, he’s making sure you’re not around.

“No, I’m serious, you two are perfect for each other. She’s always carrying books when I see her, and once she was wearing a Harry Potter shirt!”

“I read Harry Potter,” Cas says, swinging his and Dean’s entwined hands like a pendulum. “I think Dean is a Gryffindor. Sam is a Ravenclaw. I think I am a Hufflepuff. Maybe—”

“Yeah, but you’re not obsessed with it like Sam is. He’d probably want Y/N to wear that shirt while they’re having sex, he’s that into Harry Potter.”

Cas squints.

“Look, I just think it’s a good series!” Sam exclaims. “And that’s nothing compared to the cowboy hats I found hidden underneath your bed, Dean. You can’t really talk.”

That shuts Dean up for a while, but the comparison must explain it all to Cas, because he gives an exaggerated nod.

As the trio strolls downtown, nearly everyone says hi to them. It’s that sort of town where everyone knows everyone, and everyone especially knows them.

In the supermarket’s parking lot, Jody and Bobby are talking while Jo and Ellen argue a few feet to the side. Sam sees them and nudges Dean with his shoulder, nodding in their direction with his chin.

“Jody, Bobby, Ellen, Jo!” the elder Winchester yells, waving frantically at them with the hand Cas isn’t holding.

All the adults’ faces brighten. Dean has that effect on people.

“It’s my three least favorite idjits,” Bobby grumbles when they’re in earshot, but he’s the first to hug Dean, Sam, and Cas, in that order.

“Hey, loser,” Jo says, breaking away from Ellen and punching Dean playfully in the arm.

“Hey yourself,” Dean replies to their almost-sister. “You and Mo—Ellen still arguing, then?”

“She still wants me to be a lawyer. I’m happy with my job. For now, at least. How you doing, Cas?” She switches her attention to her favorite out of all of them, though she’ll never admit it, and Sam and Dean shrug at each other.

Dean moves in to hug Ellen and then Jody as Sam and Bobby talk quietly. “My two favorite ladies!”

Ellen rolls her eyes. “Your sweet-talk won’t work on me, boy. Bobby was telling me all about your mischief at work. What do I always say?”

“‘Don’t get caught’,” Dean repeats her mantra, rolling his eyes. “Where’re the kids, Jody?”

“Claire and Owen wanted to hang out with their Aunt Donna. God knows they’ll have at least fifteen more toys and clothes by the time I get home,” Jody replies. “Hey, did you know Sean and I are thinking of getting one more?”

“Really?” Ellen turns to Jody. “That’s the first I’ve heard of this.”

“It turns out Claire has a friend named Alex whose grandma died when she was about six. We haven’t met her yet, but Sean already seems sold.”

Dean drifts away from the two moms, who don’t even seem to notice him leaving, and back to Cas, who takes his hand immediately.

“—but I bet there will be at least a minor one today, considering all the bonfires and grilling,” Sam’s saying to Bobby, who’s nodding. Jo shakes her head and crosses her arms.

“What are they talking about?” Dean whispers to Cas.

“Sam thinks we will get a text,” Cas whispers back. “Jo thinks we won’t.”

“Five bucks, Jo?” Dean offers.

“You’re on, Winchester,” Jo grins after checking her wallet. “You’ll have to put it on my tab, though. I’m not packing cash.”

Dean groans. “You’ve already got twenty on the tab! I’m never gonna get my money, am I?”

“You will!”

“I won’t!”

“You will!”

A familiar form exits the supermarket and heads in the opposite direction of the shouting siblings. Cas tugs away from Dean, who doesn’t notice as he’s now competing with Jo as to who can be louder. “Y/N?”

You turn around at the sound of your name and smile when you see Cas. “Cas! I should have known the shouting was Dean. What are you doing here?”

“I was walking with Dean and Sam when we saw Jo, Ellen, Bobby, and Jody,” Cas responds, following after you as you try to listen and walk to your car at the same time.

“Wow, you really do know everyone, don’t you?”

“Some people we know better than others,” Cas responds, which isn’t really an answer to the question you asked, but you’ll let it slide. Cas is like that. “We help people. And people get into trouble a lot.”

“Tell me about it,” you puff, struggling with unlocking your car and holding the grocery bags at the same time. When Cas takes the bags from you, you grin at him. “Thanks.”

“W-would you like to come meet them?” Cas offers hesitantly. “Our family really is quite nice.”

You look over at the group. Jody and Ellen are talking normally, Sam and Bobby look to be discussing something serious, and Dean has hoisted Jo up and is carrying her like a sack of flour. It must be a normal occurrence if all the adults are ignoring the two.

You check your watch and grimace. The time’s not a problem, but it is an excuse. You’d feel too much like an outsider if you went over, you know already, and what would you even talk about? “Sorry, Cas, I really am, but I’m on my break right now and I’ve got to get back. Everything’s just been so hectic lately what with the move and all—”

“You’re moving?”

You nod and take your bags back from him. “Yeah, hopefully. I want to be closer to my work so I won’t have to drive as much every day. Plus, Crookshanks would probably like a larger house and what with his recent escape, Mr. Azazel’s patience with us is pretty thin. I’m getting the paperwork finalized next week, and the actual move is in two weeks.”

“Won’t you miss Sam and Dean?”

You avoid his eyes as you shut the door on your now-full backseat. “Well, I guess, but really, we aren’t that close and if you ever really want to see me, you could find me. It’s not a large town, and you already know where I work. You could just bring Fluffy in,” you joke and open the driver’s door. “Hey, can you do me a favor?”

Cas nods.

“Could you tell anyone you know that has a dog about the clinic’s new training program, if it’s not too much to ask?” You smile. “I’ll be working there when I’m not needed but we need dogs to attend.”

“Are bunnies invited?”

You laugh, but Cas was serious. “Again, it would be great if you could, Cas, but no pressure. I’m hoping the people here have some cute dogs. I _love_ dogs.”

“But you have a cat.”

You shrug. “In my space, it was all I could do. Besides, I’m so busy that a cat was the best option, but I’m hoping to get a puppy soon that can hang out at the training center while I’m working or maybe work as a volunteer at the hospital. I was talking to a woman named Hannah who works as a nurse about it a while ago.”

“Hannah is my sister. She told me about you.”

“Wow! It really is a small town, I guess.” You get in your car. “I’ll see you later, Cas. It was nice talking to you!”

You pull out before Sam gets to Cas. “Hey, was that Y/N?”

Cas nods. “Yes. She was on her break. She says she’s moving soon.”

Sam frowns and shuffles his feet. “R-really?” He huffs.

“Well, I wouldn’t lie about that,” Cas replies. “She says she wants to be closer to her work. You should get a dog.”

Sam cocks his head at the abrupt subject change. “What?”

“Well, Y/N says that her clinic is opening a training center for dogs and that she’ll be working in both the clinic and center. Since you want to see her so badly, you could get a dog and have her be the vet and trainer.”

“I—really? I mean, I don’t want her to—I don’t—”

“Sam, you are very bad at hiding your feelings. So is Y/N.”

“There are no—”

“Dean, your brother is in love!” Cas yells, then starts sprinting for his boyfriend. Dean stops pretending to drop Jo and sets her on her feet, sees Sam chasing Cas, and starts to sprint too.

“Idjits,” Bobby mutters.

“In love?” Jody yells.

“Cas, Dean, if you say a word I _will_ kill you!” Sam bellows, gaining steadily on his brother and his brother’s boyfriend with his longer legs.

“With our hot neighbor—” is how far Dean gets before a burst of speed helps Sam take a flying leap at his brother. They fall into a bush and Cas takes the badge out of his pocket.

“This is Detective Novak, may I ask what is going on here?” he asks, to his own amusement. The brothers hardly hear him over their own fighting, but he doesn’t mind. Cas’ humor is strange and rarely amuses anyone but himself.

“Well, it’s about time,” Ellen mutters to Bobby. “Look at our boy, all grown up. He’s got his first crush—”

“And yet he’s still enough of an idjit to tackle his brother and wrestle with him in front of the supermarket,” Bobby grumbles back. “All right, you two! Stop! Save it for the bedroom!”

“Gross!” Everyone else complains (except Cas), but it gets Sam and Dean to stop.

“Hey, Dean?” Cas asks, squinting as he looks at his ruffled boyfriend.

“Yeah?”

“You and Sam should get a dog.”

* * *

 

Jo spends the rest of the next day gloating about how she only owes Dean fifteen dollars now, and that the number’s sure to drop until Dean starts owing her too.

* * *

 

Dean finds his phone. It was in one of the dispensers in the women’s room. Gabe had been the one who had hinted at ‘poetic justice’ and he’d put two and two together.


	2. Chapter 2

At this point, you’re pretty sure the universe hates you.

You don’t know what you did to piss off fate, but it seems like everywhere you turn, there’s one of the Winchesters, or some appendage of them—Bobby, Jo, Gabe, and Cas don’t have the last name ‘Winchester’ but they’re all connected in some way.

At least none of your coworkers know Sam and Dean. From what you’ve seen of the boys’ fans, if someone does know them, they’d never stop talking about them. You’re surprised you haven’t fallen to what you’ve started to call the Winchester virus—yet.

You’ve never seen such a close-knit group of people and it’s really sweet, how much they seem to care for each other, but they’re always talking about Sam and Dean. Sam and Dean this, Sam and Dean that, Sam and Dean saved kittens from a house fire yesterday, this morning they saved one of their colleague’s lives.

Not that they aren’t great, because they are. And you’re glad they’re saving kittens’ lives, because you love kittens, and you’re glad nobody’s dying in local fires, but you’ve got a problem.

You blush.

A lot.

At a lot of things, like having to speak in front of small and large groups of people, you saying something dumb to someone you don’t really know, someone asking you a question you don’t know the answer to, someone teasing you, someone questioning you in general, lying, and so much more.

Basically, if no one looked at you, everything would be peachy.

And for some reason you don’t really want to know, the mere  _ mention _ of Sam freakin’ Winchester makes you red-hot like the firetrucks he rides in.

Oh, and did you forget to mention, you blushing so much makes you embarrassed, but the more embarrassed you are, the more you blush?

So, it’s either you start wearing an unholy amount of makeup to stop from looking like a tomato every time someone mentions Sam’s name—and jeez, are the boys, like, local celebrities or something?  _ Everyone _ knows them—or you, like, get over this weird crush thing. You’ve not spent an hour in his presence, so how could you be so flustered over even his  _ name _ ?

At least he’s not one of your patients. You’d probably catch fire if he came around and you had to sit in a closed-off room with him for a half hour.

_ Good thing he’s a firefighter, _ you think and chuckle aloud.

“What?” Your secretary and first friend in this town, Charlie Bradbury, asks without taking her eyes off her computer screen. You don’t know what she’s looking at; it’s all a bunch of black and white gibberish on the display.

“Sorry.” You shake your head and stow your phone in your coat pocket. “Just… thinking of a funny scene from a TV show I watched last night.” You can feel the heat rising up your cheeks and pray she isn’t looking at you. Charlie rarely takes her eyes off her computer screen, especially because she works another job while being your secretary. It’s not a lot of work, so she also works for the government in hacking into people’s electronic stuff. You’re not very good at all that stuff. Thank God she is.

“Hey, remind me who’s coming today?”

Charlie rapidly clicks the mouse, minimizing the gibberish screen and pulling up multiple files before finding the right one. She recites, “Brutus Crowley—” You smile at that. “Missy Walker, Dagger Chambers, Lola Banes, and Bailey Hanscum. Garth is taking care of all the other patients. Speaking of—” Charlie checks her watch. “He’s cutting it close again.”

“Cut him some slack, he’s an excited newlywed.” You sigh. “I think it’s sweet.”

Charlie pushes away from her computer and wheels over to you. “What’s that sigh for?”

“What sigh?” You look away and pick up your file for the day just to have something to do.

Charlie exaggerates a sigh and repeats, “‘I think it’s sweet.’ What’s that about?” She gasps. “Is there someone? A boy?” She wiggles her eyebrows at you.

“No!” You crinkle your nose as if disgusted, but really you’re trying not to smile at the mental image of Sam that pops up in your head.

“A girl! I like girls, too, I’m not judging.”

“Speaking of, you need to bring Kara around sometime! You guys are still together, right?”

“Yes, we are, you would know if we weren’t, and you’re changing the subject.” Charlie puts her hands together prayer-style and regards you with squinted eyes.

You start to get red and look away, pretending to shuffle through the case files. It’s just a checkup for Brutus, but Missy’s been refusing food. And Dagger—

“You like someone.” Charlie gasps. “You don’t like Dean, do you? You’ve been talking about him a lot. You know he’s with Cas, right?” She grimaces. As if you’d ever be a homewrecker like that.

You pull a face. “No! Ew! I don’t like Dean—wait, you know Dean? And I haven’t been talking about him, like, at all!”

Charlie laughs. “Hey, look, as your closest friend, whenever you mention a potential love interest, I notice. It’s taken you long enough to get over Brady. You were talking about the Winchesters, especially more recently, and well… even I can admit they are  _ smoking _ . And the tone of voice you used when you were talking about them… Besides, who doesn’t know Dean? Everyone knows Dean and—” Charlie’s mouth drops open. “Sam! Oh my God, you like  _ Sam _ !”

“You do?”

You and Charlie turn at the sound of Garth’s voice. He shuts the back door and hangs up his coat and briefcase without taking his eyes off you.

“Hey, Garth!” you say loudly, trying to convey that you’re going to kill Charlie with your eyes. “How’s the wife?”

“She’s great. You like Sam?” he asks again, like you hadn’t heard him ask the first time. “Wow! I love Sam! I bet you guys will be great together!”

“No, I really—I really  _ don’t _ ,” you insist. “You probably don’t even know the Sam we’re talking about—”

“Well, Winchester, duh.” Garth smiles and chuckles. “Are there any other Sams in the town?”

“Um, yes, three others, and Charlie’s just being stupid and projecting her happy lovey-dovey feels onto me. I’m focused on my work now. I don’t have time for distractions.”

“Y/N, you’re getting red,” Garth points out in a sing-song voice and picks up a sheet of paper from Charlie’s desk. Of course, that only makes you redder. “Oh, hey! Mrs. MacLeod is visiting with Leo today! I love Leo. He’s my favorite snake.”

“I think he’s our only snake,” Charlie muses, finally distracted, and you breathe a sigh of relief and check your watch.

“Oh! We’re opening in one minute! Is everything set up?”

“Y/N, relax. Even if things aren’t ready, the only person scheduled exactly for 9 is Crowley, and he literally could not care less.”

“Speak of the devil,” you say while poking your head out of the employee’s room. Crowley stands in front of the glass doors with Brutus at his side. The enormous Neapolitan Mastiff sits at his feet, perfectly obedient as always.

You mouth ‘one moment’ to Crowley, who rolls his eyes (you blush) and duck back into the room. “He’s here. Where are the keys?”

Charlie tosses them to you. “Did you know, Asa always puts them on the coat rack when he’s finished with the night shift? It took me forever to find them the first time and we were fifteen minutes late to open…” She continues to speak to Garth, who listens intently while preparing himself some coffee, and you welcome Crowley and his dog in with a large, genuine smile. Crowley is definitely an acquired taste and so is Brutus, but they’re both sweethearts once you get to know them.

“How are you today, Crowley?”

“I’m perfectly well, Y/N,” he responds in his dry British accent. “How are you?”

“I’m all right,” you reply. “A little stressed because of the move, but I’m excited too. And how is Brutus doing?” You crouch down to the dog’s level and scratch his head. “Just the checkup, huh?”

“That is correct. You are satisfied with the help you received through my company, though, aren’t you?”

“Oh, Mr. Asmodeus was lovely,” you assure him. “Packing up is just a hassle. You never know how much you own until you have to box it all up, right?”

Crowley laughs, probably only out of courtesy, but that’s one of the reasons why you like him. He’s always perfectly polite and courteous. You would think he’s only being nice to you because he’s nice to everyone (and that doubt does still cross your mind at times) but he’s taken to calling you Bird, and Charlie tells you he only calls people animals when he’s especially fond of them.

“You know, I almost wish Brutus would get sick more often,” you remark off-handedly. “I hardly ever see him, do I, boy?” You pat his head and lead him by his collar to the scale. “Not that I’d like to see him sick, though,” you add hastily.

“No offense taken, Bird,” Crowley assures you. “I did hear something about a training center for dogs…”

“I guess word has gotten around,” you say while writing down Brutus’ weight. “I mean, it is a  _ training _ center and Brutus is, obviously, an angel. The sentiment is kind, though.”

“Wouldn’t it help to have another dog along to set an example?” Crowley asks.

You frown and tap your pen against your chin. “That’s actually not a bad idea.”

“Perfect.” Crowley straightens his already-straight suit. “Then you’ll send me the schedule?”

“Y-yes.” Feeling yourself get redder, you change the topic. “Brutus has only gained a tenth of a pound since we’ve last seen him, so that aspect is fine.” You give the dog a treat, one of the many stowed in the pockets in your coat, and wink at Crowley. “Off to a private room, then.”

“Heel, boy,” Crowley commands and they follow after you.

“Now, I don’t suppose any of the answers from last year have changed?” you ask while listening to Brutus’ chest with your stethoscope.

Crowley settles himself into a chair with a regal dignity you didn’t think possible for a mere human. “Well, as the town grows, I become busier and busier, but I have hired a dog walker to take Brutus on his regular walks, and then I obviously exercise him in the park while I eat my lunch. Apart from that, nothing has changed.”

You mark that down on your clipboard. “Oh, I forgot to ask—did you bring in the feces we asked for?”

Crowley flourishes a Tupperware container full of Brutus’ poop that he’d pulled seemingly out of nowhere.

“Perfect, I’ll have Garth go over that immediately.” You stick your head out of the room and call, “Garth! We got poop !”

“That is a lot of poop,” Garth comments as he takes the container from you.

“Brutus is a big dog,” you reply. “Make sure you wash it out well, all right?”

Brutus seems perfectly healthy, so you send the two men off a few treats lighter and with Crowley’s number in your pocket. You have no idea where Crowley put the Tupperware container after you gave it back to him, but that’s just Crowley for you.

The rest of the day is a breeze. Gordon Walker was probably more worried than he needed to be, since his cat only has a small cold, but you sent them away with medication. Krissy Chambers’ bunny, Dagger, had a UTI.

You had a small break after that and got to hold Leo during his wellness examination and talk with Crowley’s mother, Rowena. You don’t know how she looks so young, considering her son is at least 45.

After that you got to meet Lola Banes, Alicia Banes’ new white rat. It was just a wellness examination for him as well, but he wasn’t exactly friendly. And Donna Hanscum’s energetic cocker spaniel, Bailey, has fleas.

At the end of the day, you sit slumped in the employee’s room, sipping out of a coffee. It’ll keep you up tonight, but at this point you’re too tired to make it back to your apartment. You need the caffeine.

“Long day, huh?” Charlie spins around in her chair once, a blur too fast for you to make eye contact with, before she gets back to typing.

You nod and heave a sigh. “I just need to get on a good sleeping schedule again, that’s all.”

“You’ll be back to yourself once the move is over.”

“God, I hope so.”

“Hey, you wanna head home now?” Charlie stands up from her computer and cracks her neck. “Garth and I can handle cleanup, or even Asa and whoever he works the ER with. You’ve earned a good night’s sleep.” Charlie takes the coffee cup out of your hands. “You won’t be able to sleep if you drink this.”

“I won’t be able to drive back if I don’t drink it,” you correct and grab for the coffee cup. All that happens is burning-hot coffee slops over the edge and you both snatch your hands away at the same time. The cup smashes on the floor and you hiss, shaking your hand.

“Fuck,” you both say at the same time, staring at the smashed cup on the ground.

“This is why we can’t have nice things, Charlie,” you immediately joke. “Hey, at least I’m a medical professional. I know how to bandage burns.”

“You know how to do everything,” Charlie grumbles as you wrap up her hand. “You should work the ER too, sometimes. Asa had to call Garth in because some cat was having troubles that he didn’t recognize. You’re the boss. The boss should be doing the hard work.”

“Yeah, Charlie, I’d sure love to work 24/7,” you say sarcastically. “I work the ER on Saturdays. Sundays are my off days.”

“I’ll clean up the mess,” she says, ignoring your sarcasm. “You go home.”

You start to walk away but stop in the doorway. “Hey, Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you—forget it.”

“No, what?”

“I’ll get back to you after I ask Garth about it,” you evade, turning red again. You don’t want Charlie to know anything about it. At least Garth is moderately subtle. Charlie would probably punch Gordon in the face, and he hasn’t even done anything.

Garth is just finishing up with someone’s dog when you knock on his door.

“Bye, Mrs. O’Connor!” he calls cheerily. “Have a nice day!”

“You too, Mr. Fitzgerald,” she responds.

“Hey, Y/N,” Garth greets, turning around to grab a Clorox wipe. “Buddy really sheds a lot. What’s up?”

“I was wondering if you could take Missy Walker from now on?” You hold your breath as your face turns red.

“Why?”

“I don’t really like her.”

“What?” Garth laughs. His back is still turned and you’re grateful. You’re blushing hard right now. “Missy’s super sweet and you love cats. What’s  _ really _ up, Y/N?”

“Nothing!” Your shoulder slips off the doorframe and you stumble. “Nothing, really, Garth. I just—she only comes in once in a while and most of the time I’m really busy and Krissy and Lee had to wait a long time while I was with Missy.” You take Missy’s file out from behind your back and shove it at him. “If it’s not any trouble…”

Bemused, Garth takes the papers and skims over them. “If you really don’t want to, Y/N, then sure, but—”

“Perfect! I’ll tell Charlie. Thanks, Garth!” You call, already out the door and down the hall so he can’t change his mind.

Charlie’s just finished cleaning up the spill when you hurl yourself into the room. “Garth’s going to be taking care of Missy from now on, all right?”

“Huh?”

“Garth agreed to take on Missy Walker from now on because I’ve got so many other patients,” you say slower and avoid where she’s crouching as you walk across the floor to grab a few coffee K cups for your one at home.

“Any reason why?”

“I felt super rushed today,” you fib and hang up your coat in the closet. “Oh, can you hand me a ‘Clean’ sticker? I didn’t get peed on or anything today.”

Charlie hands you the sticker you’d asked for so Asa won’t put it in the wash unnecessarily. You stick it carefully onto the shoulder of your coat and shut the closet door.

“What time is it?” you wonder while checking your watch. It’s 5:34. You’re running a full hour ahead of schedule.

“Bye, Y/N,” Charlie calls after you as you shrug on your real coat and exit the clinic through the back door.

Since you’re turned back to yell “Bye!” you don’t notice the large form in the doorway and hit it full-speed.

“Sorry!” you squeak, taking a step back to look at the person’s face.

Asa grins at you. “Where’s the fire?”

“I drank some coffee,” you admit. “Just now.” You grin and bounce on the balls of your feet. “Good luck tonight, A!”

“See you, Y/N!” he calls after you as you hurry past him. Hopefully no dogs get hit by cars tonight. He’d love a nice, quiet night.

During work, you’d forgotten about your annoying crush and terrible luck, but the second you get into your car it all comes rushing back. You’re running a full hour early—will you see Sam when he’s coming home tonight?

You can’t help the rush of adrenaline that floods through you at the thought.

God, you really do like Sam, don’t you? That’s embarrassing. How do you make it stop?

You turn on your car and a blast of cold air slaps you in the face. It doesn’t warm up until you pull into the parking lot of the apartment building, and you roll your eyes. The car’s moderately old. You’ll have to get a new one, but not for a while.

You’d called it—Sam is in the elevator when the doors open, and you both step back with surprise.

“Sorry,” he immediately says. “Normally no one else is on the elevator at this time. You get off early?”

“Yeah,” you reply. Surprising yourself and Sam, you keep the conversation going by asking, “Were there any fires today?”

Sam shakes his head. “We cleaned up the trucks, mostly. Dean and Cas both got in trouble for making a mess in the vending machine room, but—” He stops talking and you look at him with surprise, but he’s looking down.

You’d reached for the elevator button with your bandaged hand. Sam’s eyes don’t lift from it as he asks, “What happened to your hand?” Is it just you, or does he sound… angry? Why would he be angry?

“I burnt it, actually,” you respond, torn between hiding the point of conversation so Sam will get back to talking about Cas and Dean and whatever they did because the more Sam looks at you the more you blush, and acting nonchalant about the whole thing so Sam doesn’t think you’re a wimp. “Charlie tried to take my coffee mug when it was still hot. Really, really hot. I didn’t think coffee could get hot enough to burn people, but Garth likes his drinks especially hot so I think he adjusted the machine somehow.” You stop your rambling and suck in a breath. “It’s really not a big deal,” you add as if that’ll make you seem tougher when in reality you’d just admitted you’d bandaged up your hand after spilling hot coffee on it.

“Oh. I actually heard something about that a while ago. Some woman sued McDonald’s for serving her coffee that gave her serious burns and she got compensation because McDonald’s apparently  _ knew _ their coffee was dangerous and was serving it at a dangerous temperature on purpose,” Sam rambles and you frown. For some reason you’re having a serious case of deja vu, and you instinctively flinch, imagining that something just lunged for you. Why would something lunge for you?

You clear your throat after a moment of silence and prompt, “What did Cas and Dean do in the vending machine?”

Sam looks away from your hand and then at you. Dimples appear in his cheeks (you want to swoon;  _ he has dimples?! _ ) as he chuckles. “They were having an indoor picnic for a date since Dean’s hours are all screwy at the moment.”

“That’s sweet,” you say softly, imagining you and Sam having a picnic inside because one of you is too busy working to have seen each other properly. When you realize what you’d been imagining, you blush and look away.

_ How is Sam Winchester so goddamn beautiful? _

“I thought it was corny,” Sam admits. “Probably because he’s my brother.”

You duck your head. To spare you from an awkward silence, the elevator doors finally open and the two of you practically sprint to your rooms.

You heave out a sigh as you lean against your closed apartment door. You’re a mess.

Crookshanks trills at you from his spot on the counter, delighted that he’s getting treats earlier than he normally does.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” you mutter, pushing yourself off the door to him. Unfortunately, you hadn’t been looking at the ground so you hadn’t noticed the liquid on the floor as well as the glass.

Your foot slips out from underneath you and you cry out as you fall back. Your hands brace your fall, but your bandaged hand smarts. You curse loudly as you roll over, shaking out your sore hand. A drop of liquid hits your face. Your fingers come away red when you touch it. There are broken glass shards sticking out of the heel of your hand and blood wells up from them quickly and stains the bandages on your hand red.

You get up carefully, minding the liquid and glass and cradle your hurt hand so as not to get blood everywhere as you pad to the sink. A steady stream of curses fall from your mouth. Crookshanks swipes at you when you walk past him without giving him treats, but you don’t even bother to humor him.

Loud knocking at the door makes you jump. “Y/N? Are you all right?” It’s Sam. Oh, so he’s conscientious as well as beautiful? There’s got to be  _ something _ wrong with him. No one can be that perfect.

“I’m fine!” You call back. “My damn cat—”

“Do you need help?”

You survey the scene: you, with a bleeding and burnt hand, water and glass on the floor, Crookshanks sniffing at the crime scene—

You yelp. “Crookshanks! Get away from that! Just a second, Sam! Sorry!”

You want to wrap a towel around your hand so you don’t get blood everywhere but that would push the glass shards deeper into your skin so you just lunge for your cat and scoop him up with your good hand. You toss him into your bedroom and slam the door shut so he doesn’t hurt himself before opening up the door.

Sam takes in the drops of blood on your cheek, collarbone, and shirt, and finds the source immediately. “What happened?” he asks, carefully taking your hand by the wrist and leading you to the kitchen sink, being mindful of the mess in the hallway. You almost slip again on a drop of your own blood but he holds you up. The only thing you can think about is how embarrassed you are, and how impressed you are that he can literally hold you up with one hand without any struggle.

“My dumbass cat knocked over the cup I left out and I slipped on the water and cut my hand,” you grumble, embarrassment making your cheeks flaming. “This is just not my day, I guess.”

“That’s why you should get a dog,” Sam jokes.

“Yeah, I will, once I move,” you say, immediately brightening at the thought. “I hope Crookshanks gets along with it.”

“What kind of dog are you going to get?” Sam asks. He puts your hand over the sink and hunches down. His broad shoulders keep you from seeing what he’s doing.

Your hand is immediately the most sensitive part of your body. You feel every twitch of his fingers as they touch yours.

You wince as your hand stings and instinctively try to bring it closer to your body. Sam’s hands don’t let your hand twitch. He’s so strong.

You hate that you sound like a teenage girl with a celebrity crush.

“What are you—”

“I’m trying to get the glass out of your hand and distract you at the same time.”

“How do you know how to do that?” You’re genuinely interested; you’d thought that you would have to patch yourself up.

“Well…” Sam pauses and you wince as he gets another piece of glass from your skin. How his large fingers can be so gentle and precise, you don’t know. “My dad liked to leave beer bottles all around the house in precarious positions. Me and my brother got good at getting glass out of skin. We were pretty clumsy kids.”

It sounds like a lie, but you let it slide. It’s not like you two are close enough to be sharing family secrets.

“But back to the dog you want,” Sam says. “Describe your ideal dog.”

“Um…” You bite your lip as you stare at his muscular back and broad shoulders. “I really like—” Your voice turns into a squeak as he pulls what feels to be a particularly large shard out of your hand. “I really like big dogs, you know? So maybe a Briard—they’re really obedient, or a Neapolitan Mastiff like Brutus, Mr. Crowley’s dog. I would really like a Portugese Water dog, though. When I was younger I had a Labradoodle but she never liked the water and I really want a dog that likes to swim. My family has a lake that I own now—”

“Done.” Sam lets you go and the first thing you feel is disappointment, and then surprise. You hadn’t expected to get so distracted you wouldn’t feel the pain. You’d been so distracted you’d started to babble.

“Thanks.” You grin at him. “Can you grab the first-aid kit? It’s in that cabinet.” You point with your good hand. It’s in the only cabinet you can reach without getting on your tiptoes.

Sam hands it to you. You stick your bad hand under cool water from the faucet and pick out everything you’ll need to bandage yourself up with your other hand.

Once you’re all bandaged up, you turn around to see that Sam had cleaned up the mess on the floor.

“You didn’t need to do that,” you say, staring at the ground. You’re not quite sure what to say to Sam, the perfect gentleman.

“It really wasn’t any trouble,” he says gently, smiling down at you. The dimples hit you full-blast again.

You don’t have a response for that, so you just stare at him, and the smile slowly drops off Sam’s face as he takes a step closer to you. “Y/N—”

Your cat interrupts with a howl behind the door as he scratches it. You both look away with heated faces and you almost trip as you skirt around Sam to open the door and let him out. Crookshanks, ever an oblivious fuck, just beeps at you indignantly for locking him up and jumps onto the counter for treats.

“Thanks again, Sam,” you say with your back turned, an obvious dismissal. “If you ever need anything, let me know.”

He sighs. You don’t know why (you think you do, but there’s no way). “You too, Y/N.”

You don’t turn around until you hear the door open and close. Then you turn and slump against the counter. You shouldn’t feel this way about Sam, he’s your brother…

You frown and raise your hand to your temple. Where did that come from? Sam’s not your brother; you barely know him. You’ve been his neighbor for two years after you moved to town and only noticed him a few months ago.

You feel a headache coming on.

Crookshanks rubs his head against your arm. “I know,” you say absently to him and scratch the base of his tail. “I know. Weird.” You pick him up.

He meows, only the sound comes from behind you and not from in your arms.

You whirl, your hand flying to where you keep your gun, only there’s no gun in your waistband. You’ve never even  _ held _ a gun. Why would you keep a gun in your waistband? You are crashing hard from that cup of coffee. You need to sleep.

After setting an alarm on your phone for 8 o’clock and making sure it’s plugged in and charging, you fall onto the bed. It only takes you a few minutes to fall asleep, which is a new record for you—it’s hard to relax sometimes.

For some reason you dream that Sam and Dean Winchester are standing over your sleeping form and shaking you. You wake up halfway multiple times,  _ positive _ that someone actually touched you, but it was either only Crookshanks or your imagination.

You scowl in your sleep as Dream-Dean and Sam beg you to do something. You would do it if you could make out what they want you to do.

* * *

 

Sam can’t seem to take his eyes off your lifeless form, face paler than he’s ever seen.

“I don’t understand,” Dean says. “Y/N knows what a djinn world looks like. Why won’t she wake up?”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey so this chapter has a trigger warning so if you get upset by this stuff please do not read, I don't want to be responsible for someone getting hurt  
> TW: Mentions of abuse, 'suicide' (sort of)

“You sure you’re okay?” Charlie gives you a weird look as the two of you sip coffee in the employee room. Her computer is powering on at the reception desk. Charlie would probably die before she brought her computer into the employee's room.

You fake a smile. Ever since that first night of weird dreams, you haven’t been able to get a good night’s sleep. Dean and Sam are always talking to you, saying things you can almost make out. You almost can’t wait to move out. Maybe it’s because the walls of your apartment are so thin and they’re so loud that their voices are bleeding into your dreams. “I’m fine, really, Charlie.”

“You look tired.”

“Wow, way to compliment a girl,” you say sarcastically. “No wonder you and Kara are together. You must have swept her right off her feet.”

“I’m serious, Y/N,” she insists. “Maybe you should take a few days off.”

You blink and for a second she has short hair and is covered in blood, dread curdling in your stomach, but then you blink again and she’s back to normal, Charlie with her long red hair and bangs and Comic-Con shirt. “Really,” you barely manage. “I’m fine. I’m moving in two days, and after that I’ll be back to normal.”

She gives you a calculating look. “What’s really going on, Y/N?”

You shake your head. “Really, nothing—”

She sighs and starts toward you. In the fluorescent lights, her eyes look like they glow blue for a second. Why would fluorescent lights do that to brown eyes?

Some instinct you don’t know how you have tells you to get away, so you start to back away. “You know what, Charlie? I might just go home early—Garth can handle the rest of the patients, right?”

“I’ll be right back, Y/N,” she says, but the voice that comes out of her mouth isn’t hers. It sounds like a deep hiss. “You won’t even know I’ll be gone. I have to handle your hunter friends.”

You frown. “I don’t—none of my friends are hunters!” But the second you say that, you hear Dean say something, even though you know for a fact he’s at his apartment. There’s not even anyone that could sound like Dean in the clinic.

There’s not a single person in the clinic.

Your head is on a swivel as you stumble away from your best friend whose eyes are glowing. Are those blue lines on her skin too?

Dean’s voice nearly deafens you: “Y/N, snap out of it! Come on, you know what a djinn dream looks like!”

You suck in a rasping breath as the lock on your memories pops free. The djinn must be upping their game; when Dean got caught by one he knew that it wasn’t real.

You start to run. The town, bustling with people just moments earlier, has turned into a ghost town, and you can hear every footstep and panting gasp you take.

“I control this realm, Y/N!” Charlie yells after you, her voice Charlie again. “There’s nowhere you’ll be able to hide!”

“You’re not Charlie!” you yell. “She’s dead!” You turn a corner and skid to a stop as Charlie stands there, eyes wide and hands outstretched to you.

“Y/N, come back,” she says. “I’m not dead. I’m right here.”

You backtrack onto the main street, where cars should be right now, at the beginning of the workday, but there aren’t any.

“Y/N, come back!” Now Bobby calls, his voice singsong. “This is better and you know it! You’ll have a nice, fulfilling life here. You don’t like the slow burn? I can change that! You and Sam can already be together. I’m just here to make you happy.”

“You’re here to kill me,” you snap back. When you blink, Bobby is in front of you, his eyes glowing blue too.

He shrugs. “It’s a mutually beneficial relationship.”

“With that mouth, you could be a politician.” You spin on your heel but Crowley’s there to block your way.

“Come on, Y/N, be reasonable,” the djinn says with Crowley’s dry British accent and face. “We can work together! This can be the perfect world for you—I can make Donald Trump never have existed, I can make you and the Winchesters regular or hunters. You name it, you get it. You can’t tell me you’d turn that down.”

If you thought about it more, you’d say yes. If it wasn’t you v. the djinn, you’d say yes. If you weren’t so stubborn and defiant, you’d say yes and sink into the comfort of a lifetime where you can relax and sleep well at night, where the bags under your eyes won’t be as large as the ones they hand out at Target.

But it’s all fake, and you’d have to give in to have this life, and you are the most stubborn, persistent motherfucker you’ve ever known. You’d cut off your nose to spite your face.

So you sneer in his face and start to run away again, looking for anything you could use to kill yourself. Thank goodness Dean had lent you his father’s journal and you’d read it fully, or you wouldn’t know how to escape a djinn world.

“Y/N!” Dean yells after you, and for a moment you can’t breathe. In this world, Dean is happy and dating Cas. “What sort of psychopath chooses unhappiness over happiness, Y/N? This is what I  _ want _ for you, Y/N!”

You spot a nearby house and change direction for it, tennis shoes providing pretty good traction for you on the pavement (you make a mental note to get some later instead of boots because boots are loud and clunky).

You swing open the door that should be locked so hard that it bounces off the wall and shuts behind you with a click, but you know that won’t do much difference.

The walls shudder and bend like they’re made out of flimsy cardboard. You duck your head and run for the kitchen, where there’ll be some knives you could use to… what? Slit your wrists? The self-preservation in you protests at that, but at the same time it’ll be saving your life. Talk about a paradox; it’s getting all Macbeth up in here.

You stop in your tracks as someone whispers your name. Your practical side whispers that it’s just the djinn, but why would the djinn pretend to sound like Sam when he’s crying?

Your pants drown out the sound of Sam’s voice so you hold your breath and wait for him to continue talking. Really, you don’t even need to breathe in this dream. He’s talking about two times slower than he actually does.

“Come on, Y/N,” he whispers. Is that the real Sam or the djinn tricking you? “Come on, Y/N. You know what a djinn dream looks like. You need to wake up.”

“Sam, we have to take her somewhere,” Dean says from a long way away. “Like a hospital, or—”

“What hospital could help with this, Dean?” Sam flares up and the house shudders over you. You immediately duck for falling objects, but the house isn’t real. It’s like all the loose objects have been glued to the walls and floors. You’re the only non-fixed thing.

“They could keep her alive for a bit longer, give her more time to figure things out—”

“That’s a big fat if, Dean,” Sam responds. You stumble over to the kitchen’s granite island and peer around, acutely aware of the djinn drawing closer.

“Why do you want me if Sam and Dean have already taken me off the needle?” you yell, unsure if the djinn will be able to hear you but willing to use any tactic to distract it. You almost yell, ‘You could go find another victim!’ but then realize that you came here to kill this motherfucker. If he runs and hides, knowing that you and the Winchesters are on his ass, he won’t surface for years, or ever.

With no response, you start to yank open drawers for a knife or anything that could kill you.

“I don’t want to take that chance, Dean! I can’t—we can’t lose anyone else. We can’t. She’s our little sister.”

Your cheeks burn and you freeze, a large knife clutched in your white-knuckled grip. After being in this supernatural coma for so long, you’d forgotten that people being alive and you living a normal lifestyle wasn’t the only thing the djinn had changed. In real life, Sam doesn’t love you. He doesn’t even have a crush on you.

“That’s right,” Sam, right behind you and talking at the normal speed, says. You whirl around and he smiles softly at you, a smile djinn-Sam uses that looks familiar but you know that it’s a smile reserved for the small group of people he’s ever been interested in romantically. It only looks familiar because the djinn’s been flashing it at you ever since it got you.

But even as you think that, you think you remember Sam smiling like that at you once, maybe three months ago, while you and him were drinking and Dean flirted heavily with a brunette wearing six-inch heels. Did he, or are you just thinking wishfully now?

“You’re thinking wishfully, Y/N,” the djinn-Sam says sadly, taking a step towards you, and you raise the knife threateningly, though you suppose pointing it at yourself would be more of a threat. “Sam knows perfectly well how abruptly a hunter’s life can end. Do you think he would have hesitated if he felt any differently? But I—” it takes another step and the frown clears. “I won’t hesitate if you don’t want me to.”

But you’re almost positive he’d smiled like that at you. You hadn’t noticed then, because you’re almost painfully obtuse, but when you’d been sleeping in the Impala later that night, you had thought that maybe, just maybe, Sam might have been flirting with you.

Of course, he hadn’t acted any different the next day so you’d settled your hopes and resolved yet again to just being a friend, until…

Sam had smiled at you like that another day, too, and it had been snowing. Dean had woken you up early, which was unusual since the both of you sleep late and respond aggressively to being woken, but it was snowing outside and the two of you had spent hours making a snow fort and snowball arsenal while Sam slept on in the motel bed, unawares. The sky hadn’t even been light when Dean had woken you up.

And then Sam had woken up and you and Dean weren’t there. He’d burst out of the motel room wearing pajamas and one sock, already about to shout, and a snowball had hit him right in the face, courtesy of you. The ensuing snowball fight had ended when someone else came out to yell at you three for being loud, and Sam had flashed a secretive grin at you, only it looked a little different than his usual secretive grins. And you hadn’t noticed.

“Hindsight really is 20/20,” you say, both as a reply to the djinn and your memory, and let out a deep breath. You feel like you’re about to vomit. You’re not one for suicide, apparently.

“Why do it now?” the djinn-Sam asks, and something in his voice stops the smooth metal blade from splitting your skin.

“Enlighten me,” you say after a pause, “as to how anything’s changed.”

“While you were busy running around, I took care of your hunter friends,” it shrugs.

“Not possible,” you shake your head. “You’re  _ lying _ .”

“How do you know that?”

“Time in here isn’t slowed down, it’s sped up!” You gesture around. “Me running around was probably about half a minute in the real world.”

“Do you really want to take the chance?”

“Do I want to choose between a meaningless five minutes in here or a life out there, without the Winchesters, helping people?” You shake your head and scoff. “You’ve been in my head, you bastard. What do you think the choice is?”

You press the cold metal to your warm skin, suddenly very aware of how real everything feels, and the djinn lunges for you.

* * *

 

“Come on, Y/N,” Sam mutters, grasping your cold, limp hand in his own. You’re not supposed to be cold and limp. You’re supposed to be warm and strong. Your eyes move under your eyelids and he brightens for a second, but all too soon you settle and he slumps even lower.

He can hear the muted murmurs of Dean as he and Bobby talk on the phone, both frantically trying to think of ways to save you, but the only way Sam can think is by you killing yourself in the djinn dream, but you haven’t already. Why would you do it now?

Sam checks the time on his watch. It’s been nearly an hour since they last tried to give you water. You hadn’t responded and they’d had to turn you over so you wouldn’t choke to death.

To soothe his pounding heart, Sam puts his fingers on your wrist. It seems much smaller and more fragile than it does normally, even though you’re dwarfed by him even while healthy. Still, your heart pounds, albeit weakly, and you breathe shallowly, a sound that’s nearly drowned out by Sam’s louder breaths and Dean’s voice.

“Come on, Y/N,” Sam pleads, looking up so the tears don’t fall out of his eyes. “I don’t know if you can hear me, but you’ve got to wake up. Please, Y/N.” It hurts too much to say anything else, though there’s a lot left to say. He’d been trying to protect you by ignoring his feelings but now, looking at you so close to death, all the arguments he’d built up in his head seem so empty and meaningless. You’re still going to die; you’re a hunter, and Sam’s never going to be able to tell you that he likes you more than a brother should love his sister.

He almost can’t remember hunting without you. Haven’t you always been in the backseat, making references to books you’d read in high school and messing around too much with your knives?

Hasn’t Sam  _ always _ gotten tongue-tied whenever you’d smiled at him? Hadn’t his stomach  _ always _ flipped at the sound of your voice?

“Cas, come on,” Dean mutters, dialing his number as he stomps back into the room. “Sam, you try to get Cas’s angel ass down here. Pray, call him, shout, anything. I’m not—” Dean’s face crumples for just a second as he looks at your still form. “If that was you or me, Y/N would be making jokes about Sleeping Beauty, you know?”

For a moment Sam’s fingers slip and he panics that your heart will stop and he won’t be able to tell. The rush of emotion makes tears surge up to his eyes but the small pounding his rough calluses can make out soothes his nerves. “Yeah,” he agrees and starts to call Cas from his phone. When the angel doesn’t answer, he tries Dean’s phone.

“Listen, Sam, I really gotta go kill this djinn, all right?” Dean says.

“You’re going to leave Y/N?”

“It’ll only take a second, and anyway, it’s what Y/N would want—”

Sam stands up, Cas set aside for the moment, and your hand falls back to the makeshift bed the brothers had made. Your chest stops rising and falling. “Y/N would want you with her when she wakes up!”

“And if she doesn’t, I don’t want to miss this chance!” Dean retorts, looking down so Sam won’t see the glossy sheen on his eyes as he grips the silver knife dipped in lamb’s blood.

“Don’t say that,” Sam pleads. If his older brother thinks you’re not going to make it, then you’re not, and you have to make it. You have to. “Don’t you dare say that, Dean. Y/N’s going to be  _ fine _ .” He turns his back on Dean and the older brother leaves the room, leaving the space silent except for Sam’s sniffles.

Except it shouldn’t be quiet.

Sam’s eyes widen with dawning horror when he looks at you and sees no motion—you’re not breathing, your eyes aren’t twitching. “Y/N?”

Tears fall from his eyes for the first time as he collapses to his knees in front of your lax form, hands fumbling to your wrist and neck for a pulse. There isn’t one. “Oh, God, Y/N,” he sobs, one hand covering his mouth. “Come on, Y/N. Cas, get down here!” If it was any other person, Sam would be able to stand, do something, anything, kill that motherfucking djinn that did this to you, but you were his strength, legs, everything. “Please, Cas. Please.” Sam closes his eyes and two more tears fall out of his eyes, but they don’t bring you back to life. Sam, of all people, should know tears don’t save people.

A breeze rustles Sam’s hair and he staggers to his feet while turning around. Cas stands there in his usual trench coat and tie. He doesn’t even get to ask where Dean is before Sam’s clocked him and shoves him against the wall. “Save her, you bastard, or I swear to God I’ll kill you,” Sam growls.

Cas blinks at him. “You’ll have to let me go, Sam.”

“Is—is she—” Sam tries to ask as he takes a step back from Cas, but the word won’t come out of his mouth: _dead._ _Is Y/N dead?_

_ No, of course not. Y/N can’t die. You of all people should have seen that. Y/N’s the special breed of people that can’t die, Sam. _

But what Cas says is: “Not yet.”

Not  _ no. _ Not  _ she can’t die. _

She is dying.

“Not yet,” Cas repeats. “You will have to guard us while I enter her head. I will not be present.”

“How long will it take?” Sam asks desperately.

“It may not work,” Cas warns him. “She only has six minutes and one second left until all brain activity stops.”

“What are you waiting for, then?” Sam snaps, taking his gun out of his waistband. “Trust me, that djinn is dead the second I see him.”

Cas doesn’t mention that Sam doesn’t look like he’s capable of killing anything right now; his cheeks are shiny with tears, fingers dirty, and lip bleeding from biting it hard enough to break skin.

The angel touches your forehead and his eyes begin to glow, increasing in brightness until Sam can’t stand to look at him.

He turns to point his gun at the doorway just as the djinn appears.

* * *

 

If Cas wasn’t an angel, he would have been severely disoriented as he entered your mind. He knows that djinn seconds are much faster than real seconds, but he hadn’t anticipated how much faster; everyone around him is a blur. You kiss Sam, you move into his apartment and Dean moves into Cas’s, Sam goes to work and you stay at home to be an author, you wake up in the same bed with Sam, Sam brings home a dog for you, Sam kisses you, and he proposes to you after four years of dating all in the first five seconds that Cas arrives.

He lifts up his hand and everything freezes, except for you.

You look around frantically when your fiance, whom you’d been just about to kiss, and all  the noise of the restaurant clapping, stops, leaving your ears ringing. Everything is frozen. A lock of Sam’s hair is still falling over his forehead, a drop of water hangs suspended in the air, a little girl’s dress has turned to stone when before it was light as air.

“Y/N, we have to hurry,” Cas says to you, maneuvering his way through the frozen people. You’ve never seen him wearing a trench coat before. Cas is a doctor that prefers sweaters and slacks.

“Cas, what’s going on?”

“We have five minutes and forty-five seconds,” he replies.

You back away from. “Wait—what did you mean, five minutes and forty-five seconds?”

“Roughly,” the angel clarifies. “It generally takes seven minutes for all brain activity to stop after your heart stops beating.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Y/N, you are in a djinn dream,” the angel says, tilting his head and taking another step toward you. “You were hunting the monster when it got you. Sam and Dean are very worried about you. Five minutes and forty-four-point-five seconds. It would appear that time is speeding up.”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about,” you reply. “Cas, get out of here! This must be a bad dream or something. I don’t know what you’re saying,” you say slowly, hoping dream-Cas will get the message.

“Y/N, the djinn locked away your memories. You have to remember. I can help—” Cas takes a step toward you, his hand raised to tap your forehead, but you duck away from him and pinch your arm.

You don’t wake up. Everything stays frozen.

“This is the most vivid dream I’ve ever had,” you mutter, squeezing your eyes shut.

“Five minutes and forty-four seconds,” Cas says. “Y/N, you have to remember. Just try to remember, all right?”

You pat your back pockets. In dreams, cell phones don’t exist, and you can’t read books or tell time, right? But you pull out your phone and check the time—6:48 p.m.

“Y/N, there are people right now, people out there that need you!” the angel says, a hint of frustration tainting his voice.

“Out where?” you shout.

“Outside your head! Just let me restore your memories—”

You dodge his hand again, some baser instinct you don’t recognize telling you to shove a table at him and run. The table moves but when your body slams against the door and you fumble to open it, it doesn’t budge. “Please wake up, please wake up,” you whisper under your breath as you kick the door. In just a second you’ll wake up next to Sam to restart the day. “Come  _ on _ !” You look up and everything outside is pitch-black. There are no stars or lights. It’s like there’s nothing outside at all.

“It won’t open because there’s nothing out there,” Cas says softly. “If you don’t leave the dream now, you’ll walk out there into nothing and your brain will shut down and you’ll be dead. Sam will be devastated and so will Dean. They might make a deal with a demon to bring you back, but few demons ever get close to the Winchesters.”

You lean against the door, forehead against cool glass, and a single tear falls from your eye and rolls down your cheek. “This is the worst dream I’ve ever had, hands down.”

“Y/N, think about it,” Cas pushes. “Do you remember your mother?”

You nod your head.

“How did you escape her if not for Sam and Dean rescuing you?”

“I went to college and never came back,” you reply. “I’m an author now, I’m writing a series—”

“Sam and Dean saved you when your mother tried to kill you because she was possessed by a demon. When they told you that, you’d said you thought she was just having an off day. Y/N, do you remember? You have to remember!”

Your eyes fly open. You remember, vaguely, what your mother looked like—how had you not thought it was weird you couldn’t remember what your own mother looked like? You remember wrestling with her when she pulled a knife on you. Sam and Dean had stabbed her right through the heart and you’d been ecstatic when both woman and demon died.

“The djinn got me?” you ask, turning around, but Cas has disappeared. “Cas?”

* * *

 

The bullets Sam loads into the djinn only seem to anger it.

“Dean?” Sam yells. He doesn’t hear a response. The djinn takes advantage of his brief distraction and lunges at him, knocking the gun right out of his hands.

“I’m going to kill you, with or without that gun,” Sam growls. The djinn aims a punch at him that he can’t see because of his teary eyes and he reels back, right into Cas. The light fades as the angel’s connection with you is broken.

Sam pushes himself off Cas and tackles the djinn around the waist. They both hit the ground and start to wrestle. Sam gets three good punches right to the djinn’s face, but the djinn brings his knee up into Sam’s stomach and he doubles over, coughing.

“Sam!” Cas yells as the djinn’s hands get dangerously close to his head.

“Yep,” he chokes out, scrambling backwards on his butt to get his bearings. He’s going to tear this djinn limb from limb for hurting you. “How’s Y/N?”

The djinn grabs Sam by the shirt and hauls him up, smiling to reveal bloody teeth. “Your girl’s gone now.”

Sam shakes his head. “You can’t kill her.”

The djinn looks pointedly at the room where you’re lying motionlessly, Cas hovering over you. “Just did. And I’m going to kill you and your brother and your friend, too.”

Sam grins and blows a lock of hair out of his eyes. “I doubt it.”

“The djinn took her memories,” Cas says sadly, yanking the djinn and hunter away from each other. “I don’t know if I was in there long enough for her to remember.”

The djinn grins pointedly at Sam, who clenches his jaw. “Cas, let go of me,” he says in a low, controlled voice that scares even the angel.

* * *

 

Everything unfreezes. Everyone looks around mid-clap, looking for the new fiancee, and Sam’s eyes lock onto yours immediately. “Y/N? What just happened?”

“I—” you can’t breathe all of a sudden as you remember the first world the djinn had made for you. Outside your mind is a fucked-up world where you might die bloody, a world where you’re not supposed to love Sam and he doesn’t love you. Right here, though, this is perfect, just like it’s supposed to be.

The walls shudder around you, just like they’d shuddered when you’d been a vet in that house about to kill yourself, as Cas, the angel Cas, says to your dying body, “Four minutes.”

Four minutes that could be a whole lifetime.

“I’m sorry,” you say to the Sam you wish for. “This hurts, doesn’t it?”

“What are you—”

You stride across the room, feeling like you’re wearing your hunting gear instead of a nice blouse and soft jeans, and stand on your tiptoes to kiss Sam on the lips. “I guess this is one way to figure out what you really want.”

“Y/N—”

You turn around and eye the imaginary steak knife you’d used to eat an imaginary steak. It’ll feel real, no matter how imaginary it actually is. This is the end of being able to look at Sam the way you want to and seeing him look at you the same way. You’re going to wake up and Sam and Dean are going to be relieved but not overly so, because you’re just an annoying girl they sort-of adopted when they saved you.

The handle of the knife is cool when you pick it up and Sam grabs onto your wrist, looking at you intently. “You want to leave me, Y/N?”

“I’m sorry,” you whisper. He’s turned into a djinn-Sam, not the Sam you want. “But I’m not into imaginary worlds.”

“It will feel real.”

You shake your head. “But I’ll know.”

You rest the cool metal on your wrist, wincing already against the pain you think will come, even though it’s not real.

You can’t draw it out. The physical pain will cripple you, not to mention staring into Sam’s eyes, unimaginably sad as he watches you kill yourself. They look so real. No wonder you were fooled.

You squeeze your eyes shut and yank your arm back.

The slash does hurt, just like you’d thought it would.

* * *

 

“Hey!”

Dean tries to pull Sam off the djinn’s bloody form but his younger brother shakes him off, snarling and crying as he slams his fists again and again on the monster’s face.

“Hey! Sammy!” Dean hooks his arms under Sam’s armpits and drags him, kicking and screaming, off the monster, and tosses the silver knife dipped in lamb’s blood to Cas. He doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t really need to. Cas nods and pads over to the djinn, moaning on the ground. His expression doesn’t change when he eases the knife into the djinn’s flesh, ignoring the monster’s final moans as it dies.

“Sam, calm  _ down _ !” Dean yells as his brother struggles to go back to the djinn.

“I wanted to kill him!” Sam bellows. “Cas, bring him back so  _ I _ can kill him!”

Cas looks at Dean, who shakes his head. He stands and wipes the knife off on his coat before retreating to the doorway of the room where you’re laying. He looks at the brothers and shakes his head. Dean’s face crumples but he doesn’t let go of Sam as Cas disappears into the dimly lighted area, probably to see if there’s any hope at all.

“Dean, let me  _ go _ !” Sam yells, trying to push away from his older brother, but emotion and exertion have taken too much out of him, so Dean just pulls him to his chest and braces against the weak blows that eventually stop as Sam begins to cry. Sam twists his hands in his older brother’s coat and sobs against his chest, tired and heartbroken.

Dean’s heart breaks too, twice, for his little brother and little sister. You were the glue that kept him and Sam together, always ready to call them dumbasses and have them sit down and sort through their issues.

And his little brother had practically worshipped you without even knowing it. He sounds like a little kid again, hiccuping and coughing with each sob that tears up his throat, because his goddess has just died and he doesn’t know what to do.

Dean just closes his eyes, rests his head against the wall, and hugs his brother’s head to his chest. It’s all he can do.

* * *

 

Your first gasp of air burns your throat, and you immediately raise your arm so you can check for cuts. Your skin is clear and whole. You’re alive, you think. Everything is a little greyer than it had been in the djinn dream, but Cas is wearing his regular trench coat and tilting his head at you like he always does.

You wince as something smashes just a little ways away. “What—” Your voice comes out as a croak so you swallow a few times before trying again. “What’s going on?”

“They’re killing the djinn,” Cas responds.

“Uh, Cas,” you start, closing your eyes because even the small amount of light filtering into the room hurts them, “can you do me a favor? Other than the solid you just did me, obviously.”

“Of course.”

You beckon him over. Once he’s kneeling by the side of whatever you’re lying on, you whisper, “Don’t tell Sam what my dream world was, okay? Please? Just agree with whatever I say it was.”

Cas frowns but nods.

“All right.” You close your eyes and brace yourself. “Time to make my dramatic entrance.”

“Excuse me?”

“Help me up, please,” you command, wincing as you try to sit up. The djinn had hit you pretty hard in order to get near enough to you to touch you. You’re pretty sure you have some broken bones.

“I should heal you before you attempt that,” Cas says and puts his hand on your stomach. You groan as warmth spreads from his hand to your whole body, making your ribs, right arm, and middle finger smart. You must have broken all those bones during the fight. Good thing you have Cas. “It would appear that your ankle is also sprained, but too much angel healing could burn you up inside. Also, I used much of my grace to enter your mind.”

“That’s fine,” you wheeze. “I’ll hop around.”

“I believe they may need me,” Cas says, glancing back into the room. You wave a hand at him to go and try to sit up on your own. He spares you a worried look as he exits but you manage a tight smile at him.

You’re sitting up and leaning against the wall by the time the fighting dies down, but Sam’s yelling incomprehensibly and you don’t know why. A little bit of pressure quickly reveals which ankle you’d sprained, and you gasp at the pain. Your good leg wobbles when you try to stand up and your vision goes black, so you sit back down heavily.

Cas shakes his head at Sam and Dean, presumably (you can’t see them) before helping you to stand up.

“Why’d you shake your head?” you ask, gripping onto his shoulder so tightly he’d wince if it was his actual body.

“They think you’re dead, so I told them you’re not,” he replies. “Well, you were. But you’re better now.”

You hate having to lean on Cas as you two slowly start to pad toward where you know the brothers are, him walking and you hopping. “Why…” You cough and bend over. Cas is the only thing holding you up by now. “Why am I so weak?”

“You just came back from the dead, and djinn poison is coursing through your veins,” Cas replies, slinging your arm over his shoulders and wrapping one of his around your waist. “You will need lots of rest in order to recuperate.”

“Huh.” You cough again and frown at the sound of someone crying. “Why’s… who’s crying? Why?”

Cas also frowns. “Sam is crying because of an abrupt increase of emotion. That generally happens because the body has to release the emotion somehow so they process—”

“I mean, like, why does he have such increased emotions?” you interrupt. “He’s killed plenty of monsters without bursting into tears before.”

“I don’t understand human emotions,” the angel replies. “You’ll have to figure that out yourself.”

You roll your eyes and reach out for the door frame so you can lean against that more than Cas as you take in the scene in front of you. Sam is sobbing into Dean’s shirt and Dean is hugging him tightly. The djinn’s body lays a few feet away from them, and such pure rage courses through you at the sight of it that you can summon enough strength to stumble away from Cas and kick at it—with your bad foot. You hiss and nearly fall down but Cas catches you.

Dean opens his eyes at the sound and his mouth drops open. He shoves Sam away and scrambles to his feet. His hug is so enthusiastic that he lifts you off the ground and spins you around. You laugh and hug him for a second before pushing away but keep one hand on his chest for balance. “Why’d you take away my kill?” you immediately joke. It’s always best to lighten the moment. You’re good at that. Over Dean’s shoulder, you see Cas tap Sam and the blood disappear from his clothes and skin, but Sam doesn’t notice. He’s just staring at you with an open mouth.

“Cas did, technically,” Dean replies, wiping at his eyes.

You smile. “It’s nice to see that you’d be sad to see me gone, Deano.”

“I wasn’t crying because of you,” he jokes back. “I got some dust in my eyes.”

You cough aggressively at the mention of dust and Dean immediately steadies you. “It is pretty dusty, yeah,” you croak, your eyes watering at the coughs tearing up your tender throat.

You turn to Sam, then, feeling a little awkward. It’s wrong on so many levels to think about him that way. He’ll probably get weirded out if he learns that you think about him that way. You open your mouth, racking your brain for some witty remark, but his shiny cheeks distract you, and eventually you just close your mouth again.

Dean watches all this with a secret eye roll to Cas, who is confused. If the two of you still think that there’s no romantic attraction after this, he’ll probably scream. Sam is looking at you like you’re a literal angel (a good one, obviously), and you’re looking at him shyly. You’re so in love it makes him want to barf.

“Come on, Sammy,” you eventually say, but the remark sounds forced and awkward. “You didn’t really think a  _ djinn _ would take me out, did you?”

He lets out a laugh that sounds more like a sob and crosses the room with one stride before sweeping you up just like Dean, only he doesn’t let you down. You wrap your arms around his neck and squeeze for a moment before letting go, but he doesn’t bend to let you down.

“Come on, Sam, I’m fine,” you mutter, glancing awkwardly back at Dean and Cas, who are very obviously pretending that they’re not paying attention.

“Sorry,” he mutters, burying his face in your collarbone. You can feel a few tears drip down your skin (why is he still crying?) but don’t make any comment. “It’s just unnerving to see you look so dead.”

You cough into the crook of your elbow. “Well, I’m fine now. And you and Dean get hurt pretty much every hunt, so we really don’t have to make a big deal out of this…” You look meaningfully at Dean and Cas. They know perfectly well how much you hate being the center of attention.

“Well, technically, Y/N, you died,” Cas says obliviously. Dean rolls his eyes at him but still claps him on the shoulder and pulls him into a hug. They exchange whispers for the few seconds they hold the hug, but you can’t hear what they’re saying.

You stifle a yawn behind your hand.

“Sam, Y/N’s tired. Let’s head back to the bunker, all right?” Dean suggests.

“Y/N will need to rest for a few days, as she is still infected with djinn poison. I also sense that her heartbeat hasn’t fully stabilised yet, which could lead to serious health risks such as tachycardia or cardiac arrest,” Cas puts in. Both Sam and Dean grimace while you roll your eyes.

“It’s not that big of a deal, I’m  _ fine _ ,” you start and then shriek a little as Sam sweeps you up into his arms. “Samuel, put me  _ down _ .”

“You heard Cas, you need to rest,” he replies, trying to grin at you like he normally would, but his eyes are worried instead of playful. You let out a huff when he doesn’t let you down even after you try to push him away and cross your arms and glare when he starts to walk.

“This is  _ humiliating _ ,” you whine, glaring ferociously at Dean when he snorts. “I’m not even injured!” You yawn again.

“That is not true. I healed her ribs, arm, and middle finger, which were broken,” Cas adds, making the brothers frown. “However, I did not have enough ‘mojo’—” he uses finger quotes and you smile against your will— “to heal her sprained ankle. Also, that would possibly have made her combust. Djinn poison and angel grace do not mix well.”

“Good thing he did heal my hand, so I can do this,” you say, sticking your middle finger up at the three men. “I hate all of you. Sam, let me  _ down _ .” You try to wriggle out of his arms but his grip on you is iron-strong. “I still have one good leg!” Dean shakes his head and opens the door of the abandoned warehouse the djinn had been hiding in.

“Y/N, you just died. Shut up and let me carry you,” he responds. You elbow him in the chest. Sam grunts but only tightens his grip on you.

This hurts you more than it should. Sam is pointedly not looking at you (you don’t know why), but you’re so used to being near him all the time. You’re going to make a mistake at some point: reach for his hand, try to hug him for no reason, and then your secret will be up and the Winchesters will turn you out. Sam will be the one to shut the door behind you.

When he steps outside with you in his arms, the sunlight makes your head pound and you wince.

“Hey, Y/N?” Sam asks once everyone’s in the car. In a move that had surprised everyone except Dean, Sam had insisted on sitting in the backseat with you, which let Cas and Dean have more time to pretend that they’re not romantically involved. They’re not slick. Meanwhile, you and Sam are all cramped up in the back and you’re thinking about the djinn world, where Sam was the driver and you were the passenger, both of you all smiles and grins, holding hands as the car flew.

“Yeah?”

“What was your djinn world like?”

Cas looks at you through the mirror. You press your lips together before hesitantly saying, “I was a vet. You and Dean were firefighters. Um, Cas was a detective. Basically all our friends were alive. Charlie, Jo, Ellen, Bobby, et cetera.” You smile a bit at the memory. “We lived in adjacent apartments. I had a cat.”

“I’m proud of you, kid,” Dean says. “It’s hard to wake up from… that.”

You grin. “What can I say? I’m not into fantasies.” When something touches your hand, you yank it back instinctively and whip your head around. Sam looks at you from under his shaggy bangs, looking every bit the puppy he is inside.  _ Damn it, _ he had looked at you like that when he had first asked you out on a date, and when he’d wanted to go to an amusement park with you, and the first time you and him had  _ done it. _ But not really.

God, you’re such a creep. You fantasized about your best friend in that way. That’s messed up.

“I just want to make sure your heart keeps beating,” he whispers so Cas and Dean don’t hear.

You relax slightly. Of course. He’s all business, as always. You’ll just follow Sam’s example—fake it ‘til you make it, right? Still, you can’t relax as he takes your hand, and you think Sam can tell, because he keeps glancing at you out the corner of his eyes.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: Very, very brief mention of abuse, but if you read the last chapter okay then you should be okay this chapter too  
> Okay, so this chapter includes a LOT of references to literature. They are: the Greek legend about Pasiphae and the Minotaur, Romeo and Juliet, the Greek legend about Icarus and the sun, The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde, Macbeth, and Harry Potter. You'll probably be fine without knowing about them, but if you want to read them, then go crazy.

Two hours into the drive to the bunker, Dean turns around to check on you and Sam when he’s at a red light. As he’d expected, you’re asleep. He’d also expected Sam to be asleep, exhausted from pounding the life out of that djinn and crying when he thought you were dead, but Sam’s holding your hand (so much for keeping your pulse) and watching you sleep with an expression that almost makes Dean tear up, too.

“Goddamnit, no chick flick moments,” he mutters and turns back around. He’s a hunter, goddamnit. His brother is a sap. A stubborn sap that, for some reason, is content to torture himself watching you flirt with other men when Dean knows and has told him that you pretty much only flirt with them either to make Sam jealous or because Sam isn’t paying attention to you.

It’s like a goddamned TV show. The Y/N-and-Sam show, where both people are so stubborn and proud they’d rather die than actually admit to their feelings.

“You all need sleep,” Cas says quietly once the light turns green and Dean starts to drive. The Impala’s engine mostly drowns out his voice.

“Y/N’s still fine, right?” Dean asks. “She’s not having any cardiac arrest or whatever you said?”

Cas looks at your sleeping form. Your head is lolling around and you’re slumped. If you stay in that position for very much longer, your neck will hurt when you wake up. “She’s fine,” he says, watching as Sam yawns and closes his eyes as well.

It is an awfully intimate thing to watch someone fall asleep.

Cas flicks his fingers and your body shifts just enough that you start to lean against Sam. That will help your neck be more comfortable. His intention was not to get you and Sam closer, even if it does make Dean smile. Even if he does believe that you and Sam are the special breed of people called soulmates. It’s just for your neck.

“She is fine for the moment,” the angel finally says. “I would recommend getting her into a bed before she falls into a deeper sleep. The recovery will take a few days. She will be able to walk around between sleeps.”

“Should we stop at a motel, then, or keep driving to the bunker?” Dean asks.

“Her first sleep will be the longest,” Cas says as an answer. “What do you think?”

“We’ll keep driving for thirty minutes and then crash at a motel,” Dean decides. “Let Y/N sleep for a bit and then leg it back to the bunker. I think we all need to crash.”

* * *

 

Sam wakes up when Dean parks the Impala. Only years of self-control stop him from immediately moving. Normally he’d be alarmed at having something pressing heavily against his side, but he keeps his breathing steady until the memories come rushing back, and only then do his eyes open. Cas and Dean are talking to each other in front of the Impala.

Drowsiness urges Sam to close his eyes again, so he leans his head back. He only gets a minute before Dean raps against the window. Sam sits up enough so Dean can open up the door.

“We’re crashing until some of the poison gets out of Y/N’s system,” he whispers. “And we’re all tired.”

Sam nods and yawns, rubbing sleep out of his eyes. “I can carry her again.”

“Be careful of her ankle,” Dean reminds him.

“Which one is that, again?”

Dean shrugs. “Be careful of both ankles, I guess.”

“Where’d Cas go?” Sam asks, looking around for the angel. His powers might help in moving you without disturbing you.

Dean shrugs again. “He said he had some work to do. You know how Cas is.”

Only the poison-induced sleep could keep you asleep, because Sam has to drag you out of the Impala, hits your knee against the doorframe of the motel room, and almost falls onto the bed when he puts you on it, but you only scowl in your sleep and roll over. He’s still tired, but Dean beckons him over before he can collapse onto the other bed.

“Outside,” is all his older brother says.

Sam yawns again but follows him outside the motel room. “Yeah?”

“You need to get laid,” Dean says plainly. “By Y/N. Who is in there. Because you two clearly like each other.”

Sam crosses his arms and leans against the motel door. “What are you talking about? I think of Y/N like a sibling—”

“Sam, if you looked at me the way you look at Y/N I think I’d shoot myself,” Dean says plainly. “At this point it’s just sad. And I don’t want to see you guys torture yourselves because you’re too stubborn to admit your feelings. I’d think today was a reminder that you can’t really wait around in this lifestyle.”

“Dean, I’ve fucked up every relationship I’ve ever been in,” Sam pouts. “And they mostly die, anyway. I’m not going to do that to Y/N.” He blanches and quickly adds, “Not that I like Y/N! Because I don’t!”

“Whatever,” Dean says and Sam blinks. Dean  _ never _ backs off that fast. “But that means you can’t get mad when Y/N hooks up with other men.” He turns away and smiles when Sam grunts angrily. “You know, I think I’ve got a hunter friend that’s Y/N’s type, I could set them up—”

“Don’t you dare,” Sam growls, and then immediately sighs when he realizes that Dean had played him. “Okay, so maybe I might like Y/N a  _ little _ bit—”

Dean snorts.

“Shut up,” Sam says automatically. “There’s no way she likes me, though.”

Dean mimes shooting himself.

“She doesn’t!” Sam almost stomps his foot with frustration.

“Yeah, and you’ve never seen her face when you sleep with another bar girl,” Dean says. “You both are terrible actors.”

“Almost as bad as you and Cas.”

Dean immediately scowls. “I knew I never should have told you.”

“Y/N knows, too,” Sam grins cheekily. “If me and Y/N are bad—not that I’m admitting to anything—you and Cas are downright horrific.”

“Look, all I’m saying is that all your worries are stupid. I don’t want to delve into Cas and me. Y/N can take care of herself,” Dean says. “And she’s not really the kind of girl to pine after a boy for years. So… wait too long and you’ll lose her.” He claps his younger brother on the shoulder. “Go for it, tiger.” He pushes Sam in the direction of the door.

“I hate you.”

“Bitch.”

“Jerk.”

* * *

 

You sleep for fifteen hours, only waking up when you jostle your bad ankle, but even then it’s not for very long. Cas visits the next day and heals your ankle while you’re asleep. Your eyes move under your eyelids and you roll over, reaching for something on the bed that isn’t there. Dean’s pretty sure you mumbled Sam’s name, but not positive.

His brother, who’s sleeping in a chair next to your bed (just in case something happens, he’d claimed, but what could he notice if he’s sleeping?) stirs at his name but also doesn’t wake. He snores softly.

“Here,” Cas says, handing Dean a pair of crutches that he’d pulled out of nowhere. “Y/N will only need these for a week or so before the tenderness leaves.”

“Thanks, Cas,” Dean whispers. “Hey, let’s go outside, all right?” He jerks his head in the direction of the door and Cas nods.

“So, Y/N wasn’t telling the whole truth when she was talking about her djinn world, or at least she left out something,” Dean says. “Do you know?” It’s not really a question and they both know it. Cas had been in your head and saved your life. Of course he knows.

Cas squints. “Y/N said not to tell you.”

Dean laughs, thinking that Cas was joking, but stops when he sees that Cas wasn’t. “Um, what? Sorry, Cas, what could possibly be so bad that she wouldn’t want us to know? What, was she dating me or something?” Dean grimaces. “She wasn’t dating me, was she?”

Cas shakes his head. “Do you promise not to tell Sam?”

Dean frowns. “It depends on what it is. Is it a major secret?”

“Y/N thinks it is.”

Dean groans. “You’re gonna have to give me a little bit more, buddy. At this point we could be saying anything from Y/N wanting to, like, kill us or move out of the bunker. As long as it doesn’t harm Sam, I won’t tell him. All right?”

Cas shakes his head and sighs. “The djinn had wiped all of Y/N’s memories, unlike the time you had been sucked into a djinn world. That was why she didn’t kill herself right away.”

Dean laughs. “What, like that’s a big secret? So what? That doesn’t change anything. I sort of anticipated that, ‘cause Y/N knows what a djinn dream looks like, so that would pretty much be the only way to keep her in one.”

“She actually remembered,” Cas says. “Eventually.”

That sobers Dean. There’s a difference between you not knowing that it’s a djinn dream and you knowing it’s a djinn dream and that you’re going to die and staying in it anyway. “What?”

“Well, after a while,” the angel elaborates. “The world she was telling you about was only the first world the djinn made for her. In the second world the djinn made when she forgot again, she was an author, Sam was a lawyer, you were a mechanic, and I was a doctor. Did you know that us being together romantically was in both Y/N’s djinn dreams as well?”

Dean makes a ‘keep going’ motion and Cas clears his throat.

“Well, it would appear that one of Y/N’s wishes, apart from having a cat or dog, is to be romantically involved with Sam as well.” Cas snaps his mouth shut immediately after saying that. If Dean says he will tell Sam, he’ll just erase Dean’s memory. He won’t be happy about it, but he did make a promise to you. He knows you wouldn’t forgive him if he broke that promise. For some reason humans seem to be very secretive about their emotions, and you in particular. He supposes that must have something to do with your unorthodox upbringing.

Cas expects a few reactions from Dean: a solemn nod, an ‘All right, well, make sure that you don’t tell Sam because I don’t want to mess up their relationship, or an ‘Well, I gotta tell Sam  _ that _ ’. What he doesn’t expect is for Dean to light up like one of the trees humans put up during Christmas time and let out a whoop of joy.

“I  _ knew _ it!” He pumps his fist up and down. “I knew it, I knew it! This is perfect, now we just gotta get them together. Shit. They’re both so stubborn, and you know how Y/N is about emotions. This isn’t gonna be easy.” Dean hugs Cas around the middle. The angel doesn’t know how to respond. “Thank you, Cas.  _ So _ much.”

“Y/N seemed to be under the impression that you and Sam wouldn’t be pleased about her feelings,” Cas says. “I heard a few of her thoughts when I was healing her. She seemed to think that Sam would be repulsed and you would ‘kick her out’.”

Dean waves it away with his hand like a pesky bee. “Y/N’s always imagining the worst-case scenarios. It’s the anxiety, probably, which is why she never does Feds. Also the blushing. She blushes a  _ lot _ . Sam thinks it’s cute. He told me.”

Cas blinks. “I’m not following your train of thought—”

Dean shuts him up by kissing him, which he hardly ever does. He hardly ever displays any sort of affection, and Cas has to blink a few times to focus again. “Leave it to me, Cas. Those two are gonna be together by the end of the week.”

Cas squints. He’s heard Dean say something similar to Sam before, and Sam usually responds by saying, ‘Five bucks.’ Slowly, the angel says, “Five bucks.”

Dean blinks. “What? Oh! Do you even know what that means, Cas?”

Cas shakes his head. If he was you, he’d blush.

“It means that if I don’t get them together by the end of the week, I owe you five bucks, but if I do, you owe me. You wanna do that?”

“I can just conjure up money right now,” Cas says, confused, and raises his hand to snap his fingers.

“That’s not the point!” Dean says, pushing his hand down. “How about this: if they’re together by the end of the week…” He trails off, blushing a bit just like you, and an idea springs into Cas’s mind.

“I have to kiss you, and if they’re not, you have to kiss me!” he exclaims.

Dean grins sheepishly. “Why not?”

“Well—”

Dean puts his hand over Cas’s mouth. “Rhetorical question, buddy. Also, you’re not allowed to sabotage their relationship because you’re an angel so that’s not fair, and also, that could make them not get together ever, and that’s not good.”

* * *

 

The sound of heavy crutches and laughter precedes your entrance into the kitchen. Sam follows after you like a dog following its master. Even the look in his eyes matches that analogy. He’s literally carrying one of your books so you have an easier time using your crutches. It’s like the two of you are in school again.

“Hey, Sleeping Beauty,” Dean teases, getting up and kissing the top of your head. You pretend to try to push him away and laugh.

“Who knew Dean Winchester could be such a sap?”

“It’s just for you,” Dean vows. Sam scowls behind you and Dean just grins at him. So far trying to make Sam jealous hasn’t worked, but Dean will be damned if he doesn’t get you and Sam together. Maybe it’s because while Sam might not be happy about seeing you flirting with another guy, he knows that with Dean, it’s all fake. The beginnings of an idea begin to stir in Dean’s mind.

You peek at the books strewn over the table. “What’s that? You got a case?” As you ask that, you strain to reach a mug in a cabinet above your head, but Sam’s body presses against you from behind as he reaches for it. You smile at him when he hands it to you but look away before his dimples can flash back, which is a one-hit KO for you. Either way, a flush starts to rise up your neck.

“I think so,” Dean responds as you pour yourself some coffee. “Looks to be a ghoul.”

Sam takes your cup. The blush gets higher and darker as you limp over to the table. Djinn-Sam had carried your stuff for you, too.

“Ooh,” you say, sitting down and pulling the laptop to you. “Can I come?”

Sam coughs as he sits down next to you. “Y/N—”

You glare at him, which would be intimidating except you can’t really look into his eyes or you’ll swoon and you’re  _ still fucking blushing _ . “I’m perfectly fine now, Sammy.”

“Then why are you still wearing crutches?” Dean butts in. You whip your head around.

“Because your brother insisted!”

Dean looks at Sam, who shrugs, and he sighs loudly. His brother hadn’t taken his advice (of course, what had he been expecting?) and just decided to be your personal servant for the rest of his life. You both are pathetic.

“Here, how about this,” you propose, sliding the laptop back to Dean. “I go on a supply run without the crutches, I’m all good, I get to go on the hunt. Okay?”

“Okay,” Dean says before Sam can protest.

“Fine,” Sam grumbles. “But someone has to go with you. I can—”

Dean gets an idea and lights up before smiling angelically at you. You narrow your eyes at him. If he can’t get Sam to admit his feelings for you, he’ll get you to admit your feelings for Sam! “What, like it’s smart to leave  _ me _ with the research? Besides, I’d never let you and Y/N handle Baby alone. Sam, you can do the research here. I’ll supervise Y/N.”

“He does have a point,” you admit, rubbing your chin. “Even though I don’t need supervision.” You need to get away from Sam to cool down, even if Dean will probably tease you about blushing all the time. You don’t blush as much around Dean because you know him so well and don’t have a stupid, pathetic crush on him.

Sam makes a sound of protest. “But what if Y/N gets hurt?”

“That’s why I’ll be there,” Dean says smugly, grinning in the face of his brother’s panic. It’s like he thinks you’ll die if he leaves you alone for even a second.

“Sam, you’ve gone on hunts with a broken arm before,” you point out. “I can handle a supply run with a tender ankle. I didn’t even break it.” Dean tosses the keys to his car to you and you snatch them out of the air and grin at the brothers. “My reflexes are fine, too. See?”

Sam crosses his arms and pouts as you stand up without the crutches.

“What do you want, Sam?” you ask. “Dean’ll want pie, obviously. I need more gum and we’re running low on food. You want some salad stuff?”

“I’ll text it to you,” Sam mutters as you scribble down the shopping list on the back of an old receipt.

“Sweet, thanks,” you say, ruffling his hair as you pass.  _ There, that’s what sisters do, right? Tease each other? Dean does that with Sam all the time. _ You grin, proud of your acting skills. “Get ready for the hunt, all right?”

After a second—you touching him seemed to have short-circuited his brain—Sam scrambles up. “At least let me get the door for you!”

You tilt your head at him and squint for a second. “Samuel, I can get the door for myself—”

“It’s no trouble,” he insists. “I just want to make sure you don’t waste your energy, especially if you’re going to go hunting.” Once he walks past you, you tilt your head at Dean, who just mouths ‘ _ later’ _ .

You frown even harder, trying to figure out why Sam is acting so weird. He must be guilty about not accompanying you on that djinn hunt, but he’s never acted like this even when you’ve gotten hurt worse than a sprained ankle and some poison. A small portion of your traitorous brain whispers that he may be beginning to like you, but you shut down that thought quickly. There’s no way.

You just say, “You better not treat me like this when we’re hunting, Winchester.”

Sam snorts and mutters something, but you can only make out “Please… treat… forever.”

“Hmm?”

“Nothing! Nothing, nothing,” he says, opening the door for you. You smile at him, a little confused because of his strange behavior, but decide against questioning it. You just want to get this supply run done so you can go on the hunt.

“She’s limping,” Sam mutters passive-aggressively when Dean passes him.

“She’s fine,” Dean retorts. “You’re just in love. And pathetic.”

Sam splutters but Dean shuts the door behind him before he can respond.

* * *

 

When you pull into the parking lot of the grocery store, Dean puts his hand on your shoulder. “Hey, can we talk for a sec?”

Immediately your heart starts to beat faster and your face hotter. He doesn’t know… does he? Is this his way of kicking you off the team? Abandoning you at a supermarket without any of your stuff? No, Dean wouldn’t do that. He’s not cruel like that. “Yeah?” you ask, trying to sound casual, but your voice sounds higher than usual to you and you wince. “What’s up?”

“So what weren’t you telling us about your djinn world?” Dean casually looks out the passenger window.

You fake a laugh. “I didn’t—”

“Because I’m pretty sure it had something to do with Sam, considering the way you glanced at him after you described the world and the way you’ve been looking at him for the past week.”

Your stomach drops. Were you really that obvious?

“Yeah,” Dean replies. Apparently you’d said that out loud.

Now about five shades darker than you should be, you sigh and rest your head back against the headrest, unable to look Dean in the eyes as you admit your secret and he inevitably looks at you with disgust and tells you to get out. “Okay, you caught me. I… like Sam. And we were together in my djinn world.”

“So what are you gonna do about it?”

You open your eyes incredulously and look at Dean. “You’re not… mad?”

Dean laughs. “Why would I be mad? I might be more mad if you were just leading Sam on, Y/N. I’m  _ glad _ to hear you like Sam.”

“Why?” You make a face. “He thinks of me like a little sister. I’m supposed to think of him as an older brother. It’s…  _ sick _ .”

Dean sighs exaggeratedly and looks up. “Lord, give me patience. Y/N, the last thing Sam thinks of you as is a little sister, I can promise you that. You both are just stubborn and emotionally constipated.”

“Says the dude that denied he liked Cas for ten years,” you mutter, crossing your arms defensively. This conversation is confusing the hell out of you.

“We’re not talking about Cas right now,” Dean says quickly.

“Exactly my point.”

“Shut up.  _ Anyways. _ I’ve told Sam he needs to man up but he ignored me, but he’s still my little brother, so in order to combine my annoyance with him and look out for him at the same time, I’ve decided that I am going to get you together.”

When you don’t say anything, Dean clears his throat. Obviously he’d expected a bigger reaction.

“What am I supposed to say to that?” you ask. “Sam doesn’t like me, I promise. You’ll only make it weird between us. I just need to find a few rebound guys—”

“Y/N, please shut up,” Dean says loudly. “ _ Please _ . Your angst and denial gives me a headache. Although you’re sort of on the right track.”

You laugh. “I’m sure I would notice if Sam fucking Winchester had a crush on me.” Even the thought makes your ears burn.

“No, Y/N, you wouldn’t, because your head is so far up your ass you’re eating shit!” Dean exclaims. “Just listen to me, all right? I’ve got a plan. Either you’ll get a rebound guy or Sam, so it really can’t backfire, all right?”

You chew on your lip and cross your arms as you ponder the possibility. After a long pause, you finally say, “Fine. Tell me what your plan is.”

* * *

 

The three of you have killed the ghoul and are on your way back to the bunker, and Sam  _ still _ hasn’t bitten. Unbeknownst to you and Sam, Dean only has until tomorrow to get you two together, and though the stakes aren’t high at all, he still wants to beat Cas because he’s always competitive.

You’re beginning to feel a little silly, like it’s just the brothers pulling a prank on you, but Dean knows how you are with this sort of stuff. He wouldn’t do that to you.

You think.

And it’s not like you’re doing anything that’ll completely destroy your reputation with the brothers even if it is a prank. You’re just going out of your way to spend time with Sam—not that you need much help with that, considering Sam is sticking to you like glue—and flirting with men that you would normally flirt with. Hey, a girl’s got needs, too.

But if the djinn had taught you one thing, it’s that hindsight is generally pretty clear. So whenever you think about how Sam is acting, you can’t help but think that maybe Dean is right. He is trying to do everything for you, acting cold to the men you flirt with, and smiling at you the way djinn-Sam smiled at you.

But then again, that may just be your emotions clouding your judgement. You’re Icarus and he’s the sun; your winged confidence melts the closer you get to Sam. Not that you have much confidence to begin with—an isolated childhood often leaves you floundering where other people excel—but in your head you’re a suave, hot hunter. And even your ideal you’s confidence melts around Sam.

“Sam, come on,” Dean mutters to his younger brother as their opponents take a turn at the pool table. They’re not going to win, but it’s cute that they’re trying. “She’s wearing a Harry Potter shirt, which is your favorite, and you can’t tell me you haven’t noticed the way she’s looking at you.”

They both look at you. You wave at them from your lonely spot at the bar, nursing a lukewarm beer.

“She’s even wearing one of your sweatshirts!”

It’s true; the soft green zip-up had shrunk in the wash and you had snagged it. It’s draped over your shoulders but not zipped so your form is hidden. Sam can’t deny the thought of you in his clothes makes him flustered but also proud, like it’s a way to claim his territory, except you’re not territory and he’s not claiming you.

“Dean…”

“Sam, would I seriously tell you to make a move on one of our oldest living friends, knowing that if she doesn’t return the feelings it could ruin our relationship, without being one hundred percent sure that she feels the same way?”

Sam looks into his big brother’s eyes, completely turning away from you for the first time that night (he might be a few feet away from you, but he’s still keeping an eye on you). Dean seems deadly serious, which either means he’s telling the truth or a great liar. Too bad it could easily be both. His brother isn’t that much of a jerk, though, which makes Sam pretty sure that he’s telling the truth. So, obviously, Dean doesn’t know a lot about feelings, or he wouldn’t think that you like him. I mean, since when is Dean good with feelings, anyway?

“Dean, why would Y/N like me? I couldn’t even protect her from a djinn and you know more dangerous supernatural creatures will be gunning for her even more than now once they hear that we’re together. Plus, she’s, like, perfect, and I’m…” Sam gestures at himself. “I’ve started the apocalypse. I’m infected with demon blood. I’m an abomination.”

“I know, right?” Dean laughs. Sam whips his head around to look at his brother. He had so not expected that reaction. “So why would you alienate someone who’s willing to look past all that?”

“Dean, just please drop it,” Sam says tiredly. “She just… doesn’t.” He turns away, which means he doesn’t see Dean giving you a thumbs-up and holding up two fingers. Plan 2, or Plan B, if you will, is a go.

You droop a little with disappointment that Sam has to be pushed into talking with you, but still give Dean a thumbs-up back and start to scan the bar for a man you wouldn’t mind going home with. Unfortunately, it would seem that Sam’s ruined that for you, because every guy you look at all look the same—a little too sweaty, a little too grizzled, a little too  _ something. _ A little too  _ not Sam. _

Finally, your eyes alight on a man in the corner that looks to be about your age, and better yet, he looks a lot like Sam. He’s sitting alone.

“Here goes nothing,” you mutter, leaving your beer at the bar—it went bad a while ago anyway—and sauntering (in your head) over to the man. You wouldn’t mind going home with him anyway, but you’re hoping for the step up that is Sam. He doesn’t notice as you pass by, but Dean does, and he winks at you. You smile sheepishly at him before focusing on the man again.

Just before you get there you realize why the man is sitting alone. He and another man are sneaking glances at each other. You falter and almost turn around, but realize you weren’t in the mood to sleep with someone else anyway and slide into the booth the man’s sitting at.

“Hi,” you say a little breathlessly. The stranger’s eyes boring into you without blinking immediately make you look like a tomato, but you power through it. If all goes well, you’ll be less flushed in a moment. Of course, if he rejects you… “I’m Y/N.”

“Hi, Y/N,” the man says, extending his hand to you. “I’m Mark. Do you know that you’re limping?”

You nod. “I’m recovering from a minor injury.”

After a brief awkward silence, Mark says, “So how are you doing?”

“I’m all right,” you shrug.  _ Whew… _ off to a good start. You can feel yourself cooling down a little bit. “I’ve been better, but I’ve also been worse. What about you?”

Mark exhales through his nose. “Life. You know how it is.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” you nod and then lean forward. “Listen, do you—”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupts, shrugging and tapping his fingers on the table. “I don’t really—I’m not—”

“Yeah, you’re into that man over there, right?” you jerk your head in that man’s direction. In your peripheral vision you see him hastily turn around. Obviously, you blush, hoping you’re not wrong, but the way he clenches his jaw tells you that you’re right. Obviously. You need to be more like Sam and Dean; confident. “No biggie. I just was wondering if you wanted to have a little fun.”

“Again, I’m—”

“Not that kind of fun,” you shake your head and blow your breath out hard, making your cheeks puff out. You’re so embarrassed and overheated that you’re sweating. You wipe your forehead with your sleeve. “Geez, I’m bad at this.”

“Yeah.”

You kick him under the table. “Listen, there’s this guy for me, all right? I’m actually here with him and his brother, and his brother  _ swears _ that he likes me, but he hasn’t done anything.”

A slow smile spreads across the man’s face. “Seriously? You want me to—” He starts to laugh and has to put his face in his hands for a second as his shoulders shake. “You do realize that’s, like, the plot of a fanfiction, right?”

“I wouldn’t know; I don’t read that stuff,” you say airily, waving your hand. Your nonchalant words don’t match your posture, but you gotta fake it ‘til you make it, right? “So are you in?” You stick out your hand again, hoping he’ll take it. Mark seems like a nice dude and someone you wouldn’t have to worry about getting attached, thank God.

Still laughing, Mark takes your hand again and shakes it vigorously. “So, tell me who this ‘guy’ is, Y/N.”

“Okay, you see the guys playing pool over there?” you point when you’re sure Sam isn’t looking. “That’s the brothers. The taller, shaggy one, his name is Sam, and that’s him. The shorter one with blonde hair is Dean. He’s in on it too.”

Mark’s mouth falls open. “You’ve got to be kidding me. They can’t be human!”

You frown.

“They look like robots made in a lab! Look at them! There’s no way that someone could look that good  _ naturally _ !”

You burst out laughing. “Oh my God,  _ yes _ ! It’s unnatural, I swear, but as far as I know, they’re human.”

Mark bites his lip. “So, what do you want me to do? I don’t really want to  _ kiss _ you—”

“Yeah, no offense, me neither.” You shrug. “I guess we’ll just keep talking. Dean will let me know if we should step it up or something. Thanks, by the way.”

“I’m not doing it for you,” he informs you. “It’s just more fun to do this than stare at Daniel all night.”

You smile. “Well, I hope I can make up for his absence.”

“Okay, Y/N.” Mark signals for a waitress to come over. “How about a round?”

“I have a really good alcohol tolerance level,” you warn.

He eyes you up and down. “There’s no way you can handle more than me. Your tolerance is decided by your body mass and, no offense, you’re tiny.”

“How often you drink can help a bit,” you say. “And with my line of work, there is a lot of drinking.”

“Oh?” Mark smiles at you. “Tell me more.”

* * *

 

“Hey, we should invite Y/N over to play,” Dean mentions offhandedly, counting the stack of cash he’d won from the college students. They grumble angrily a few feet away. “I’ll even take it easy on her.”

Sam gives him a knowing look. “Dean, there is no way you’re going to get me with Y/N. I’m sorry. It’s just not happening. She doesn’t feel the same way about me.”

“God, Sam, I’m going to stab myself in the eye with a fork,” Dean groans. “Okay, sure,  _ fine, _ but that doesn’t mean we have to exclude her in everything or she’ll begin to suspect something. Is she only allowed to play with once you’ve moved on with another sleazy waitress or what?”

Sam coughs and flushes a bit before turning around to wave you over. To his surprise, your beer is sitting on the counter, but you’re not there. “Dean, she’s not there.” Immediately, he begins to panic. What if—

“Guess she moved on faster than you,” Dean says, watching his little brother’s expression carefully as he points to where you’re pounding shots with the guy you’d found suitable. As he’d expected, Sam immediately bites his lip and turns away.

“Oh.”

“Well, since you don’t care, let’s still invite them over—” Dean lifts his arm to signal you, but Sam slaps it down.

“Shut up, Dean. Just stop.”

“Sammy—”

“I told you, didn’t I?” Sam’s so angry he has to take a second to blink back tears, much to Dean’s horror. “I told you, Dean.”

“Sammy—look—he looks exactly like you!” Dean tries to turn him around but Sam shoves him off. “Except probably shorter. Sammy—”

“Drop it, Dean,” his younger brother says shortly. “Let’s just hustle some more drunk college kids.”

This is quickly backfiring on Dean, and he tries to get your attention without alerting Sam, but you’re so invested in your conversation with the stranger that he can’t snag you. Everything is spiraling out of control. If you go home with someone else, Sam will just clench his jaw like he does when he’s angry but doesn’t want to show it. Maybe you  _ will _ move on, and then Dean will have to deal with his angsty brother.

For a second a thought flits across the front of his thoughts:  _ maybe I really will have to kick Y/N out. _ Dean loves you as much as anyone could, but Sammy always comes first. And if his plan is really backfiring this badly, Sam won’t want to be anywhere near you.

Dean groans. He knows that would fuck you up; it’s something he knows you’re always worrying about. God damn your mother. That bitch had been so horrible you hadn’t even noticed she had been possessed by a demon even when she was whaling on you, and ever since you’ve hunted with Sam and Dean you’re always the first one to second-guess yourselves. Sometimes it can be useful for someone to double- and triple-check everything they do, but other times it can annoy everyone, even you.

This evening has turned into a mess.

Dean swallows down the panic that formed a ball in the back of his throat.  _ Fuck _ .

* * *

 

The bar starts to clear out about a half hour before it officially closes. Mark eventually stands up, a little tipsy, and holds out a hand. You grasp it and he pulls you up so hard your feet almost leave the floor, but that might be your impaired balance too. “I had fun tonight, Y/N,” he says. “I’m sorry your plan didn’t work out.”

You sneak a glance at the brothers. Normally you stick right by their side whenever you’re in one of these situations, but you’d had a surprisingly good time with Mark. “Me too, Mark,” you say to both of his statements. “I would say I’d like to see you again, but I doubt I will.”

“Your work, right?” he slurs. “With the traveling and stuff?”

You nod and then giggle for no reason. “Should’ve known the… fanfiction tactic wouldn’t have worked.”

“It’s all in the name,” he says, drooping a bit closer to you so you can smell the alcohol on his breath. “‘Fan’.” He frowns. “No. ‘Fiction’.”

You giggle again, heat rising to your cheeks. For the first time in a long time you’re not embarrassed by it.

“Hey, we still have a bit more to go,” he says suddenly. “We can leave and see if the robots follow.”

“Not robots, but sure,” you shrug. You pick up the sweatshirt you’d discarded sometime between the third and fifth round because you’d gotten so hot. You’d hoped that wearing Sam’s sweatshirt would send a signal, but no deal. Maybe he’s seeing all your signals and just isn’t interested. That would be embarrassing. “Lead the way, Romeo.”

“No, you’re Romeo,” he retorts. “Moving on so fast?” He leans down to your ear and whispers, “Your Rosaline is watching.”

“Right on, then,” you say, saluting him. “Let’s go kill ourselves.”

“Here’s my poison,” he says, taking one of the last shots on the table. “Where’s your dagger?”

“Romeo has the poison,” you correct and laugh. “You can have my dagger, though.” In a moment of recklessness that you could only muster when drunk, you take one of your many knives out of your pocket and twirl it around your fingers before handing it to Mark.

“Whoa,” he marvels before handing it back to you.

“Into the cave!” you yell and pull him out the doors, forgetting entirely about the brothers.

Dean notices but pretends not to. Sam unabashedly follows you out. He doesn’t have a good feeling about this Mark dude. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do, especially since you’re presumably going back to his house, but maybe he’ll knock the two of you out and take you back to the motel room. Except him carrying the body of an unconscious girl might get the cops called on him.

Mark pulls you into an alley where Daniel is waiting.

“Daniel, this is… Romeo,” Mark says, hiccuping.

You dangle off Mark’s arm and grin at Daniel, who just shakes his head. “Moving on so fast, Mark?”

“Bye, Juliet!” you call. The two lovers disappear into the shadows without responding, but you don’t mind. You absently kick at a stray beer bottle on the ground and look around with disappointment. Sam hadn’t followed you outside. You guess he just doesn’t like you after all. Hopefully it wasn’t all a hoax conjured up by the brothers to embarrass you.

The brothers. You should probably get back to them before the monsters get you.

You burst into the bar, panting a little bit, and the few people in it—the bartender, Sam and Dean, and three other people sitting in a booth—all look at you with surprise, but you ignore them for the first time in your life and sling yourself onto a stool. You raise one finger and smile lopsidedly at the bartender. “I would like one alcohol, please.”

The bartender gives you a doubtful look. “Honey, are you with anyone?”

“Yeah!” You nod and grin. “Can I have an alcohol?”

“Who?”

You point at Sam and Dean and laugh. Dean’s bending over a table. “Sean and Dam!” The bartender looks at them. Dean’s too preoccupied with perfecting his game technique but Sam’s watching you again with an unreadable look. He nods at the bartender and then shrugs. She slides you another beer. As you start to chug it, Sam slides into the stool next to you and gently lowers the bottle from your mouth. Your skin tingles where it touches his.

“Good job on the hunt, by the way,” he says softly. You don’t look at him but you do get a little redder. He takes that as a sign that you’re listening. “I never would have remembered in time that Pasiphae was the woman that gave birth to the Minotaur.”

“Made sense,” you shrug. “Ghoul gets around using underground tunnels. Cocky ghoul. Too cocky, right? I’m just that good.”

“You are just that good.”

“Good thing he wanted to trap us in the tunnels or he never would have left the clue.”

“I bet you would have found them anyway,” Sam says, his smile turning a little sappy. He almost can’t handle just how much he likes you.

You nod confidently. “I would’ve.”

Sam screws up his courage and asks, “What happened with the other dude you were going home with?”

“Juliet?” You wipe your chin. “He went home with his Romeo.”

“Are you Rosaline?” Sam asks, humoring you. He rests his chin on his hand and watches you become fixated with the patterns of the wood.

“No,” you say after a long pause, tracing a swirl with your finger. “You are, though. You survive. I don’t.”

“Where’s all this coming from?” Sam asks. “The djinn?” He’s not quite sure what you mean. If he’s Rosaline, and the other man was Juliet, then that means you’re Romeo and you’ve moved on from Rosaline. Does that mean he really had missed his chance? Or are you just saying that because you’d almost died and he hadn’t? Or are you just plain drunk?

“Sort of,” you shrug. “This is your sweatshirt, Sammy.”

“Yeah, it is,” he replies, grinning at you. You may not return his feelings, but you’re adorable, and he’ll be damned if he’d ever willingly miss out on the rare spectacle that is drunk Y/N.

“I don’t like being drunk,” you whisper and look up at Sam, all big eyes, flushed cheeks, and pouting lips. He has to stiffen so he doesn’t lean down to hear you better and accidentally kiss you. “Makes me lose control.”

“You’re still worried about control?” Sam chuckles. He knows that your guard is almost always up, even around him and Dean. Not that you think they’re going to hurt you or anything, but you’d rather die than show any weakness.

“The monsters don’t listen.”

“What if I don’t?”

You stick your tongue out at Sam, your brain exhausted from being drunk and trying to speak in the riddles you and Sam sometimes talk in. “I’m tired. Do you know you get even taller when I’m near you?”

“Maybe I just look shorter because you’re farther away.”

You shake your head and kick his leg. Sam grunts. “No. You make yourself taller. I’ve seen it. It’s like you’re trying to intimidate the universe. I don’t need you to protect me.”

“Sometimes you do. Solo hunting usually ends worse than hunting with a partner,” Sam points out.

“Or two.”

“Or two,” he agrees.

“You know, when you get so tall, I can’t even see your face. You’re like a tree,” you say and hiccup. “I’m not drunk. I’m just a little tipsy.”

Sam tilts his head. “You sure about that?”

You nod. “I know exactly what I’m saying.” You swipe your finger through a spare drop of beer, spreading it across the wood before saying, “You’re not Rosaline. You’re the sun.”

Sam cocks his head. “What does that make you?” He almost wants to coo at you. You’re just so small and damn cute.

It would appear the alcohol is affecting him too.

“Icarus,” you reply and blink slowly. “Sam?”

“Yeah?” He can’t breathe.

“Do you really love me?”

It takes Sam a minute to respond. He says with a pounding pulse, “Of course I do. You’re like my little sister.”

You grab Sam’s hand with both of yours and start to probe at the bones underneath his smooth skin with your small fingers. Such an innocent action shouldn’t be so alluring, but Sam feels like he can’t breathe or blink lest he ruin the hallucination, because surely you can’t be grabbing his hand like that. He’s so mad about you going home with that other guy that he’s imagined this whole conversation. That’s what it is.

“I’m not your sister,” you finally say angrily. It takes Sam a few moments to remember what he’d said.

“Yeah?”

“I want to go home,” you say, throwing down his hand and hopping down from the stool. “Dean!”

“Yes, sweetheart?” Dean looks up immediately from where he’d been ‘practicing’, proving to Sam that he’d been listening to the whole thing and not really concentrating on what he was pretending to do.

“Can we go home now?”

Dean glances between the two of you. You, with your arms crossed and lower lip sticking out like a child, and Sam, towering over you, looking confused and like he wants to step just a little bit closer into your warmth. “Sure, sweetheart.”

“I’m cold,” you say immediately upon stepping outside. Sam jumps for the opportunity and drapes his jacket over you. You accept it as coldly as you can and stick your nose in the air. Dean just watches the two of you with a small smile on his face. It looks like everything isn’t  _ completely _ fucked. Sam’s trailing after you again and  _ literally _ giving you the coat off his back and, from what Dean can tell, you’re playing with Sam. It’s a little comical to see such a petite girl have a giant Sasquatch wrapped around her fingers. Hopefully now that you’ve recognized he would do anything for you you’ll be able to make a move, but for some reason Dean feels like in the morning you’ll be too embarrassed and self-conscious to make a move.

It’s all right, though. Now that you  _ know _ .

* * *

 

Once everyone is settled in the Impala, Sam says quietly, taking a chance, “You’re Icarus, huh?”

“No,” you say shortly in the backseat.

Sam immediately droops. Dean grimaces. He doesn’t know what that means, but judging by Sam’s reaction it wasn’t good.

“I am…” It takes you a long time to think of a suitable answer. “I am Jack Worthington. We’re all Jack. So many different names.” You giggle. “Oh! Macbeth! We’re all Macbeth; we see ghosts! And daggers!” You take out your knife and begin to play with it. “And we kill things.”

“What about Hermione?” Sam asks. “Are you Hermione?”

You giggle and clap your hands once. “Yes! I love Hermione! And you’re Ron! Dean is Harry!”

Sam looks at Dean with a sort of excitement in his face. Dean doesn’t know why because he’s never read Harry Potter.

Sam’s going to take a chance. It’s probably the alcohol, but you’d first called him Rosaline and then the sun when you were Icarus. Is that you trying to drop hints? He turns around and says, “You know, Hermione and Harry are friends.”

“ _ Best _ friends,” you correct.

“Hermione and Ron aren’t friends.”

“I know,” you say, your voice suddenly flat as you stare at Sam. “I’m not drunk, Sam.” You put your knife back in your pocket.

Dean grimaces. That does not sound good.

You and Sam don’t break eye contact as Dean pulls into the parking lot of the motel. Hopefully Sam won’t be too sad about your drunk ramblings. They don’t really mean anything. You’re barely even making sense to Dean. Sam probably knows  _ what _ you’re referencing, but he’s got to be confused what with all your rapid references. He probably doesn’t know what you’re trying to say. Dean knows that you still like Sam as a friend as well as romantically, so he definitely doesn’t know what you’re saying. Maybe the two of you will just forget about it in the morning.

“Forget about it, Sam,” Dean mutters. “I don’t think Y/N even knows what she’s saying.” That’s a blatant lie. The way you’re acting, he knows you’re just a little tipsy. He’s seen you when you’re drunk, on the very rare occasions you trust the people around you enough to let your guard down, and you’re acting nothing like that.

Dean isn’t even parked before you and Sam both get out of the car, Sam slamming the door behind him so hard that Dean winces, and you not even bothering. “Sam, what the hell?” Dean complains, also getting out. He stands up and shuts your door just in time to see you and Sam crash together, your arms locking wildly around his neck as you pull him down. It’s almost comical how far down Sam has to lean.

Sam’s hands gently cradle your face as the two of you lock lips, but all too soon they leave their position and start to tug his jacket and sweatshirt off you. You unhook your arms from around his neck so he can tug them off you and discard them on the ground. Your arms immediately reattach to his hips, which are much easier for you to reach.

“Jesus Christ,” Dean yelps when Sam backs you up against the motel door. “Are you two even breathing?” He swipes up the discarded clothing and glares at the two of you.

Neither of you pay him any attention. Still not bothering to pull away from you, Sam unlocks the motel door. You yank him inside by his jacket lapels and Sam kicks the door shut.

Not once had you two parted. Dean hopes you two pass out from the lack of oxygen before you do anything else. You two had wasted so much of his time being obtuse and angsty and now you both could have damaged his Baby.

Dean throws his arms up with exasperation. “What the hell just happened?” He answers himself immediately: “Nerds are fucking weird.”

A sudden breeze makes his clothes sway slightly and he turns around. Cas smiles slightly at him.

“I won,” Dean says slightly breathlessly. “You lost. I guess that’s a first for you, huh? Since you’re an angel and all?”

“I think we all won,” Cas says seriously. “I can sense that Y/N and Sam are very happy.”

Dean snorts. “I fucking bet.”

“I believe,” Cas says slowly, “that I owe you something.” He closes the gap between them with careful steps.

Dean scuffs his shoe on the ground. “Well, I did win the bet.”

“Hmm,” Cas hums in agreement and kisses him.

* * *

 

Dean’s been waiting for you and Sam to get your butts out of the motel room for two hours now. He huffs angrily and stares even harder at the door as if that’ll make the two of you hurry up. Maybe the two of you are still sleeping. Maybe you’re talking about your feelings. Maybe you’re having another round. Who knows? Definitely not Dean! He is  _ not _ going to risk it.

Finally, after two hours and thirteen minutes, you and Sam emerge from the motel room, both of you with terrible hair, rumpled clothes, and the brightest smiles Dean’s ever seen. Sam’s arm is slung over your shoulders and you’re pressed against him so tight you might as well just be attached.

“ _ Finally, _ ” Dean groans, getting out of the car to scold them. “You know, you two are so annoying. Do you know how long I’ve been waiting for that to happen? You two were whining to me for so long I thought it was never going to! But no, you chose to speak in riddles for an entire car ride and then make me sleep in the car!”

“Dean—”

“Shut up, Sam, I’m ranting,” Dean says shortly. “You two are the weirdest fucking people I’ve ever met. Y/N, you told Sam that you weren’t even friends with him and then the next second he’s tearing clothes off you! Give a guy a little warning next time, would you? And by ‘guy’ I mean me, because Sam apparently got the gist of your insane ramblings!”

Nobody says anything for a second until you, bouncing on the balls of your feet, ask eagerly, “Can we get waffles?”


End file.
